Pedevilla Architects Disguise a Five-Story School as a Tyrolean Farmhouse in Kössen

In Kössen, a small Tyrolean village framed by church spires and forested slopes, Pedevilla Architects have planted a 1,870 m² education center that reads less like a public institution and more like a large, sturdy farmhouse that has always been there. The building gathers a primary school, kindergarten, nursery, after-school care, and a gymnasium under one continuous dark-green envelope of vertical timber cladding, its corrugated metal and wood surfaces designed to weather quietly into the surrounding vegetation. At 21,500 m³ and five stories, it is not a small building, yet its staggered volumes follow the terrain's slope so convincingly that the mass dissolves into a sequence of domestic-scale forms.

What makes the project genuinely interesting is the discipline with which it negotiates two opposing ambitions: civic presence and rural modesty. Positioned at the northern terminus of the village's access road, between the town hall and a residential nursing home, the school is unmistakably a public anchor. Yet its color palette, its wide overhanging roofs, and its reinterpretation of cross-stitch ornament motifs drawn from regional farmhouse decoration all work to keep it conversational rather than monumental. The interior flips the exterior's darkness inside out, offering rooms of silver fir, lime plaster, and terracotta that feel warm without trying too hard.

A Dark Envelope Rooted in Place

The building's most immediate gesture is its exterior color. Dark green vertical cladding and corrugated metal panels absorb the building into the forested settlement edge, especially during the grey months when snow and mist strip color from the landscape. At dusk the illuminated windows punch through the facade like lanterns, giving the mass a quiet domesticity that a lighter palette would not achieve. The strategy is borrowed directly from Tyrolean vernacular, where dark timber barns sit unapologetically against green hillsides.

Birch trunks along the approach create a loose veil between the building and the street. Seen through bare autumn branches, the ribbed wall surface gains a textural depth that a flat render would lack. The cladding is durable and low-maintenance by design, intended to age without demanding attention, much like the farmhouses it references.

The Covered Forecourt and Separate Entrances

One covered forecourt serves all three programs: kindergarten, school, and after-school care each enter through their own door, but they share this sheltered outdoor room. The timber-paneled ceiling overhead and the patterned wall surface give the space a civic identity without formalizing it into a lobby. Children, parents, and staff converge here and then disperse, making it the building's social heart even though it is technically outside.

A telling detail appears at the window canopies: triangular awnings with red undersides project from the green cladding, catching light and drawing the eye toward entries without signage or graphic wayfinding. It is a small move, but it shows how seriously the architects take the idea that color and form can do the work that institutional graphics usually monopolize.

Silver Fir, Lime Plaster, and a Warm Interior Reversal

Step inside and the palette inverts completely. Solid silver fir floors and furniture, smooth lime plaster walls containing recycled brick aggregates, and terracotta ceiling panels create rooms that feel simultaneously precise and handmade. Classrooms open through horizontal windows that frame the hillside vegetation as a continuous backdrop, collapsing the boundary between lesson and landscape. Children seated at low tables work in light that is always partially green, filtered through the canopy outside.

The corridor spaces are not throwaways. A child sitting on a timber bench next to a window overlooking the birch forest is not waiting for class; the bench and the view are designed as part of the educational landscape. Pedevilla treats circulation as inhabitable space, a principle that is easy to state and difficult to execute at this scale without either wasting area or producing dead zones.

Gathering Spaces and the Pyramidal Skylight

The central hall anchors the school volume with a pyramidal skylight that floods the room from above. Geometric acoustic ceiling panels break the light into soft patterns across the timber surfaces below. A raised platform occupies one end, flexible enough for assemblies, performances, or informal gatherings. The hall works because it is not over-designed; the skylight does the heavy lifting while the room itself stays neutral.

Elsewhere, turned wood balustrades line the entrance hallway, introducing a tactile, almost craft-oriented detail that children will inevitably run their hands along. It is a deliberate choice in an era when school interiors often default to smooth, impact-resistant surfaces. Pedevilla trusts the material to age gracefully under small fingers.

Gymnasium, Music Rooms, and Specialized Spaces

The gymnasium sits in the building's lower levels, taking advantage of the terrain to bury its volume without sacrificing ceiling height. Ribbed terracotta ceiling panels absorb sound while giving the room a warmth that standard acoustic tile cannot match. Pale plywood walls line the perimeter, durable enough for ball sports but visually continuous with the rest of the school. It reads as part of the same building rather than a utilitarian annex.

The music area uses vertical timber slats as both acoustic treatment and display surface, with instruments hung directly on the wall. A guitar overhead, hand drums on stands, pale wood chairs arranged loosely: the room is set up for immediate use rather than formal instruction. These specialized spaces share the school's material logic without repeating its exact palette, introducing terracotta, slats, and plywood in varying proportions.

Details That Earn Their Keep

The washroom is not an afterthought. Terracotta walls, a triple-basin sink scaled for children, and an illuminated window display showing paper cutouts turn a service space into something worth pausing in. The pink-tinted plaster of the stairwell walls shifts the mood as you ascend, a subtle chromatic cue that distinguishes vertical circulation from the pale horizontal rooms. These are the details that separate a building designed by architects who care about experience from one designed to meet a brief.

Plywood corners, small mirrors, and the soft glow of terracotta ceilings under natural light suggest an interior conceived as a continuous sensory environment. Nothing is loud, but nothing is indifferent either. The building rewards attention at every scale.

Plans and Drawings

The site plan reveals the building's cruciform footprint, a compact figure that maximizes outdoor space on all sides while maintaining short internal distances between programs. The three-story school volume occupies the center, with the two-story kindergarten and single-story after-school care stepping down in height as wings extend outward. This gradation is legible in the section drawing, where sloped corridors connect the stepped volumes and confirm that the terrain is not fought but followed.

Floor plans show how each wing maintains its own identity while connecting through shared cores. The ground floor organizes the assembly hall, kindergarten classrooms, and dining areas across interconnected wings. Upper floors dedicate space to classrooms and what the plans label "learning courts" and a "village square," suggesting that Pedevilla conceives the school's interior as a microcosm of the settlement outside. The south elevation drawing confirms the building's horizontal emphasis, with staggered window openings that avoid repetition without resorting to randomness.

Why This Project Matters

Educational buildings in rural Alpine communities face a particular tension: they need to be large enough to consolidate multiple programs yet modest enough to belong to a village where the church and town hall are the only landmarks. Pedevilla resolves this by treating the school not as an institutional insertion but as an extension of the settlement's material and chromatic logic. The dark cladding, the wide roofs, the cross-stitch ornament reinterpreted in contemporary terms: these are not nostalgic gestures but strategic decisions that earn the building its place. At 19 million euros for a project of this complexity and quality, the budget is deployed with remarkable precision.

More broadly, the Education Center Kössen demonstrates that the "open learning landscape" concept does not require glass pavilions or exposed steel. Silver fir, lime plaster, and terracotta can produce spaces that feel generous and connected to the outdoors while remaining warm, acoustically controlled, and durable enough for daily use by small children. Pedevilla has built a school that will age alongside its students, its materials gaining character rather than losing it. That is the strongest argument for regionalism done right.

Education Center Kössen by Pedevilla Architects. Located in Kössen, Austria. 1,870 m². Completed 2025. Photography by Gustav Willeit.

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