Beige tiles and pale pink window shutters cover the exterior of this concrete secondary school in Romanshorn, Switzerland.
Designed by Portuguese practice Bak Gordon Arquitectos with local firm Architekturbüro Bernhard Maurer, the Secondary School Romanshorn replaces two outdated buildings.

It is the start of a wider development for an educational, sports and leisure campus for the area.
Sitting alongside a low existing building built in 2000, a concrete canopy covers the school's main entrance, providing a weather-protected outdoor area that overlooks a playing field.

Externally, the otherwise austere elevations are given rhythm by these classroom windows ? each of which can be shut using a pale pink metal window shutter ? and texture by the ceramic tiles. The classrooms have white plaster walls and wooden cabinets, to contrast the ceramic and concrete exterior.

At the core of the new, square-shaped building is an open courtyard and a central hall lined.
Wooden lattice screens line the hall, which is enclosed by a circular corridor off which sit the classroom spaces.

This creates what Bak Gordon refer to as three zones - the core zone that looks inwards to the courtyard with a tree, the interstitial movement zone, and the classroom zone that faces outwards to the surrounding campus.
"The central salão [hall] is the 'living room' of the building", said the studio. "Its preferred location, the flexible and open use and the design with pleasant wooden sur...