CURA Architekten Wraps a 1960s Swiss School in Timber to Save 40% of Its Embodied Energy

Demolition is easy. It is the default setting for architects who inherit buildings they didn't design, especially postwar education facilities that no one mourns. The School Davos complex, a boxy 1960s concrete structure in the heart of Davos Platz, could have been flattened without protest. Munich-based CURA Architekten, founded by Marc Ritz and Otto Closs, argued otherwise. Their proposal, which won a 2022 competition, kept the entire existing structure and wrapped it in an inverted U-shaped timber shell that adds a third floor, a central atrium, and a completely new identity. Forty percent of the finished building's volume is the original concrete frame, untouched beneath green corrugated cladding.

What makes this project genuinely interesting is its refusal to compromise. It is not a timid renovation that leaves the old bones visible as a gesture of honesty. Nor is it a wasteful new build with a sustainability narrative bolted on. CURA's strategy eliminates the false choice between preservation and ambition. By enclosing the existing structure entirely, the architects produced a building that reads as new, performs as new, and costs significantly less grey energy than a full demolition and rebuild. The result is a school for students from first to tenth grade that also houses a cafeteria, assembly hall, administrative offices, and daycare, all served by a passive ventilation concept that borders on elegant.

A Green Shell Against the Alpine Backdrop

The most immediate gesture is the facade. Green corrugated metal panels wrap the entire volume, punctuated by horizontal band windows that give the building a strong directionality against the forested slopes behind it. The color choice is deliberate: neither loud nor neutral, it registers as a topographic element, a building that belongs to the treeline rather than fighting it. At the base, exposed concrete acknowledges the original structure's presence, though only barely.

Staggered window openings and perforated metal shutters break up the regularity of the cladding, giving each elevation a slightly different character. The street-facing corner reads as civic and composed. The courtyard side, with its geodesic dome climbing structure, feels looser and more playful. CURA managed something difficult here: a single material system that doesn't become monotonous across a substantial volume.

Facade Details and Materiality

Up close, the facade reveals layers of thought. Timber-framed windows sit recessed within the corrugated skin, and patterned panels introduce a finer grain alongside the broader metal sheets. At dusk, the illuminated windows glow against the dark green surface, turning the building into a lantern against the mountainside. The perforated shutters do double duty: they control solar gain while adding visual depth to what could otherwise be a flat surface.

The two facade systems visible side by side, green corrugated metal and white panel cladding, suggest that CURA was thinking about this building as a campus element, not an isolated object. The older concrete structures with their curved external staircases remain visible nearby, and the new shell maintains a respectful dialogue with them without mimicking their language.

The Atrium as Climate Engine

The central atrium carved into the heart of the building is the project's most consequential move. It brings daylight deep into the plan, connects all floors visually, and functions as a chimney. During warmer months, operable skylights at the top allow warm air to rise and escape, pulling fresh air through operable interior windows in classrooms and offices. Cross-ventilation makes mechanical systems unnecessary for much of the year.

The triple-height space is lined with exposed timber balconies and green metal railings that echo the exterior palette. Pendant lights descend from the skylight, and the vertical circulation becomes visible and social. Students on the third floor can see down to the ground level. Staff on the second floor can gauge the energy of the corridors. It is the kind of space that makes a school feel like a community rather than a set of disconnected rooms.

Timber Interiors and the Warmth of Regional Materials

Inside, the timber construction is left completely exposed. Walls, ceilings, and structural elements are all regional wood, and the effect is immediate: warmth without sentimentality. Classrooms are drenched in natural light, with mountain views framed through generous windows. Massive wooden ceilings incorporate sheep's wool acoustic panels, and cork flooring absorbs sound at ground level. Linoleum by Forbo and lime plaster by RÖFIX round out a material palette that reads as deliberately natural without becoming precious.

The dining hall demonstrates how these materials work at a communal scale. Terrazzo flooring anchors the space, while slatted timber ceilings with recessed circular lights create a rhythm overhead. It is a room that could host a meal for a hundred students or serve as an informal gathering space, and the materials make either scenario comfortable.

Classrooms, Workspaces, and the Quality of Light

CURA paid serious attention to the window condition. Latticed sidelights filter light into window seats, creating alcoves for individual reading or quiet work. In the classrooms, large panes frame the forested hillside and the town below, shifting with the seasons from green to gold to white. These are not generic openings punched into a wall; they are calibrated to produce specific interior atmospheres.

The office spaces and open workrooms share the same timber language. Exposed pine walls, generous glazing, views to the rooftops and peaks of Davos. One detail stands out: the sequence of doorways through pine-clad walls that creates a telescoping perspective through receding rooms. It is an old architectural trick, but it works especially well here, lending spatial depth to what are fundamentally simple floor plates.

Thresholds, Nooks, and Informal Spaces

The building's half-storey offset between the new and old sections creates landings and in-between spaces that resist easy categorization. Built-in window seats with open shelving, entry nooks with timber benches and coat hooks, corridor zones wide enough for a small group to work outside the classroom. These are the spaces where a school actually happens: the conversations between classes, the quiet reading before the bell, the coat-hanging ritual of a Swiss winter morning.

CURA's circular route through the building encourages movement and chance encounters. The corridor is not a dead space to pass through. It is a learning environment in its own right, with enough width and light and furniture to function as flexible teaching area. For a building that preserved 40% of an existing structure, the interior feels remarkably generous.

Rooftop and Exterior Grounds

The rooftop terrace, with its pale green panels and large framed openings toward the mountains, gives students an outdoor space that most schools would envy. Photovoltaic panels share the roof with this terrace, pairing energy production with recreational use. Below, the concrete entry stairs ascending to the elevated base feel civic and grounded, a threshold between the town and the school that signals arrival without pretension.

The campus view reveals the relationship between the new green volume and the existing concrete structures. Curved external staircases on the older buildings provide a formal counterpoint, and the courtyard between them becomes a shared outdoor room. Geothermal systems provide heating beneath the surface, completing a low-tech energy strategy that begins with the atrium's passive ventilation and ends underground.

Plans and Drawings

The section diagrams illustrating summer and winter airflow patterns make the climate strategy legible. In summer, the atrium's chimney effect draws warm air upward and out through operable skylights, while fresh air enters through classroom windows. In winter, the thermal mass of the retained concrete structure stores heat from the geothermal system, and the closed envelope minimizes losses. The diagrammatic sections showing the covering shell, structural grid, and spatial organization reveal how the timber frame was aligned with the existing wall axes, allowing the new construction to distribute loads laterally rather than adding weight to the original foundations.

The floor plans show a clear organizational logic. The basement and ground floor handle public and communal functions, with the cafeteria and assembly hall oriented toward the covered schoolyard. Upper floors follow a cellular pattern of classrooms and offices arranged along a central spine, with the atrium punching through the center. The cross section through the scissor stairs is particularly revealing: four floor levels connected across the half-storey offset between old and new, a spatial puzzle solved with precision. The elevations confirm what the photographs suggest: a building of strong horizontal lines and rhythmic window patterns that sits comfortably within the Alpine townscape.

Why This Project Matters

The argument for preserving grey energy is not new, but it is rarely executed at this level of ambition. Most renovation projects that retain existing structures accept visible compromises: awkward ceiling heights, constrained plans, aesthetic tension between old and new. CURA Architekten's strategy of total enclosure sidesteps all of that. The 1960s concrete school is still there, doing its structural and thermal work, but the building it inhabits is unrecognizable. The reduction in construction volume, 40% compared to a ground-up build of equivalent size, is not a footnote. It is the project's central achievement.

What sets School Davos apart from other sustainable renovation narratives is the quality of the interior experience. The low-tech ventilation, the regional timber, the sheep's wool acoustics, and the cork floors produce a learning environment that feels considered down to its smallest detail. The atrium is a genuine piece of architecture, not a diagram made spatial. For schools around the world facing aging building stock and limited budgets, this project offers a template: keep what works, wrap it in something better, and invest the savings in the spaces where students actually learn.

School Davos Transformation by CURA Architekten, Davos Platz, Switzerland. 3,725 m². Completed 2024. Photography by Daisuke Hirabayashi.

About the Studio

Share Your Own Work on uni.xyz

If projects like this are the kind of work you want to make, uni.xyz is a place to publish your own, find collaborators, and enter design competitions.