Cold pocket-areas were transformed into students’ private spaces

With a focus on sustainability, creativity, and freedom, RITA arch has created spaces for the students at Frederiksberg Gymnasium. Here, they can work on projects as well as relax between lessons in an area that is completely their own. The most important design factor was to make sure that the ‘pocket’ felt more home than educational institution.

Frederiksberg Gymnasium´s Needs

Frederiksberg Gymnasium’s building is designed with large corridors, each of which houses small ‘pocket-areas’ intended for the students. RITA arch’s task was to design the areas in a way that invites the students to be social as well as giving them a space that can be used for group work. But most importantly, the design had to make sure that the students feel that these spaces are their own.

Our Solution

The building itself is very minimal in its design; colder materials and practical surfaces are some of the things that characterise the place. From the get-go, RITA arch chose to separate the student pockets from the building and from the educational institution, as they wanted to create spaces that felt almost like home for the students. A key word in the choice of both furniture, colors and materials is diversity, making the interior feel more alive and more individual.

Bridging leisure time and school hours

RITA arch decided to select furniture with variety as a value, as it is precisely the eclectic expression that makes the student spaces different from the architecture of the house. The varied arrangement also invites the students to move the furniture around themselves and use it as they wish. This adds a bit of ‘clutter’ visually, which helps to ensure that the design and atmosphere of the pockets bridges the fun of leisure time and the school, which perhaps not everyone enjoys to the same degree.

For the same reason, official school communication is banned from the students’ spaces, and the walls are decorated with panels of blackboard lacquer, where students can write messages to each other, and mirror foil, which they can use to reflect themselves. Why? Because these pockets are strictly the students’ own.

Lasting sustainability

The students’ carefree use of furniture naturally calls for very durable materials, and at the same time the interior design reveals a sharp focus on sustainability and innovative thinking. RITA arch has selected table tops in Really – a material created from compressed textiles that would otherwise not be able to be recycled. Along the same line of thinking, the stools are made from recycled plastic, while other furniture is labelled with Nordic Ecolabel or made from FSC-certified wood.

The result is pockets where the big sofas are especially in demand; actually, even more sofas have already been bought because the students love to hang out on them. In this way, RITA arch has definitely succeeded in creating spaces that the students experience as their own.