Primary and Town School for Girls

With the construction of the primary and town schools with a kindergarten in 1927–1928,

the greatest capacity constraint in Hradec Králové was satisfied, but already in October 1930 Josef Gočár was asked to work on a detailed design of the left part of the school complex he had designed before. Schematic designs of the façades at a scale of 1:200 date from this time, while detailed designs of the building date from February 1931. In contrast to the earlier designs of 1926, when both parts of the complex were to be strictly symmetrical, Gočár, apparently at the request of the city, decided to increase the capacity of the new building, making the campus asymmetrical. He decided to lengthen the tracts that run outside the building and to give the building an H-shaped plan. In contrast to the older boys’ school,

the girls’ school would have a smaller, axially offset gym in the middle wing, which would extend only through the basement and ground floor, with a large handicrafts room and

a drawing room on the upper floors.

 

The basement housed cloakrooms, which, unlike in the boys’ school, would not be

pass-through. They were to be in the front and rear transepts, with the gym and its facilities in the longitudinal wing – showers, storerooms, and two workshop classrooms. On the ground floor in the transverse tracts, ten large classrooms were designed, all with windows facing southeast. The transepts were enclosed by four small classrooms. The longitudinal wing had

a courtyard-facing gym extending over two floors, a principal’s office, a choir room, a library,

a school physician, and two lavatories. The first and second floors had the same floor plan, except that above the gym area was a handicrafts room on the first floor and a drawing room with an art collection on the second floor. On the second floor, instead of two eastern classrooms in the transepts, there were two staircases to the residence roof terrace.

The school had a total of thirty-two classrooms. The school was divided into two parts:

the primary and the town school. Each apparently had to be housed either in one tract or on one floor – hence the school also had two assembly rooms, two libraries, and two headmasters’ offices. The schools would thus share the facilities of an observatory and darkroom on the third floor, a school doctor, and a gym. From an operational point of view,

the canteen and kitchen, which was located in the basement in the cross wing closer to

the waterfront and was the size of one classroom, may have seemed very inadequate. However, between the wars it was common for pupils to go home for meals and only those from outside the area used the school canteen. 

 

The façades were intended to be, as with the earlier 1927–1928 building, made of unplastered brickwork, facing the playground courtyard with plain white plaster. Only the top floor, with

the observatory and darkroom, was to have smooth plaster all round – it was to be a centre

of scientific progress entirely in the style of scientific functionalism, including three strip windows.

 

The enlarged and modernized design of the 1931 girls’ primary and town school remained unrealized. Gočár’s maximalist version did not come to fruition even in the late 1950s, when local architect Václav Rohlíček took on the task of completing his vision. Rohlíček based

the completion of the school building on Gočár’s earlier plans and designed a building that is completely symmetrical with the original 1927–1928 building.

 

LZL