ZETA architects in collaboration with Brim Arkitektar & Árni Winther Arkitektar have won the competition for the new school in Tórshavn called Skúlin á Fløtum.

When completed in 2020, the new school will house elementary, primary and secondary school and be the daily place of study and play for more than 850 students. Besides classrooms, the new school contains sporting facilities, drama and musical facilities, library, workshops for art, woodwork and metal, labs and auditoriums for science and much more.

The project is entitled “Eindirnar í heildini” (Units in a Whole) and focusses on creating a school which functions as a unified whole but at the same time creates individual parts for the different age groups of students. Just as the Faroese country is an islands community, where the different islands have different characteristics, the new school is an islands community consisting of seven islands with distinctive characteristics. Between the islands, a large common area flows like the ocean connecting each island and creating social meeting points for the students.

The building site is somewhat unusual for the Faroese Islanders as it is almost completely flat. As a reaction to this, the overall form of the school rises up from the terrain creating a building that rises from one to four stories with an accessible roof. The individual Islands are then eroded out of the overall form, creating the common space in between and an organic idiom with soft and curved shapes, reminiscent of the eroded rocks in the Faroese landscape.