HOW TO BE INNOVATIVE?

Kinkplatz School – Architect: Helmut Richter

When in 1994 the school at the Kinkplatz in Vienna was designed still every class had to have its own classroom. No interactive zones to meet the needs of modern learning were permitted back then as they become standard today.

In order to build a school which does not feel like the old ones Helmut Richter opened up the public areas with glass, he improved not the typology but the way how to build a school. There are not many Austrian Architects who played with the same technical experience; His thinking can be compared with Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, the designers of the Centre Pompidou.

It is no surprise that after 20 years the school at Kinkplatz urgently has to be renovated. Innovation is not always handsome. It cannot always be.