Breathing new life into a historic campus

Georg Kerschensteiner Vocational School, located in Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany, has completed a new extension building. This project, with a total area of ​​3,000 m2, harmonizes with the existing terraced buildings built in the early 1980s within the context of urban planning, while giving a new identity to the campus by adding a building with a unique façade at the southern end.

According to the architectural team in charge of the design, the key to this expansion was to secure modern functionality while respecting the architectural language of the existing building. In particular, the efficiency of movement within the campus was greatly improved by converting the previously existing dead-end alley-type circulation structure into a circular road.

Pursuing collaborative design and sustainability

This project involved a number of professional engineering groups, including the design team led by Christopher Horn, Nuremberg-based Ernst2 Architekten in charge of project management, and BBI Ingenieure in charge of structural design. Ingenieurbüro Hausladen provided environmental sustainability consulting, and Müller BBM provided sound design, enhancing the functional completeness of the facility as an educational facility. Landscape design by silands | Gresz+Kaiser Landschaftsarchitekten was in charge of promoting an organic connection between the building and the surrounding environment.

One aspect of Germany’s vocational education infrastructure modernization

Germany operates a globally recognized dual vocational education system (�ales Ausbildungssystem), and the vocational school infrastructure that supports it is continuously being modernized. The name of the Georg Kershensteiner Vocational School comes from the educator Georg Kershensteiner (1854-1932), who is considered a pioneer of German vocational education. This expansion shows that the physical space of Germany's vocational education tradition, which has continued for over 100 years, is evolving with the times.

Regensburg is a city where the medieval old town, designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a modern industrial base coexist, and the expansion of educational infrastructure plays an important role in nurturing local industrial manpower.