Competition for the new building of the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice

The competition aimed to develop the architectural and urban concept of the new facility of the Karol Szymanowski Music Academy in Katowice.
Our proposal is a composition of two blocks connected on the ground floor, housing a school and an audiovisual room, which is also a closure of the Academy campus and a spatial ‘response' to the neo-Gothic edifice on the opposite side of the street.
The perpendicular blocks cascade towards the entrance and the hall foyer, creating a spatially coherent composition with the church tower visible in the background. Using the brick as a facade finishing material emphasizes the affiliation to the Academy campus.
The structure of the building corresponds to external conditions: the corridor on the north side is an acoustic buffer from the railway side, the loggia on the south extends the garden and shades the windows preventing classrooms from overheating. The study rooms are open to the cascading hall, so we can see dancing students from every corner of the school.