Comenius Primary School, Oranienburg
Orientation for people with different abilities
The Comenius Primary School Oranienburg near Berlin moved in 2017 from its previous location in the Schlosspark to an attractive new building in Oranienburg-Süd. The school's motto, "Living together - learning together", refers to integration and new educational concepts. The building was planned by the Berlin-based architectural firm Specht, Kalleja & Partner. For the implementation of a functioning guidance system, the office relied on innovative techniques and decades of experience of Informationstechnik Meng GmbH.
Three colors dominate: Orange for Oranienburg and green and yellow for Comenius. A ribbon of color runs across the entire building complex. For the gable of the west wing, special attention was paid to a special design. There, the color bars join together to form books, between which stick figures move. Green, yellow and orange are also found in the rooms. For example, the floor coverings on the first floor have an earthy orange color. On the second floor, a shade of green reminds one of plants and on the second floor yellow floors dominate, as a symbol of the sun.
The harmoniously colored rooms are now used for integrative elementary school work, meaning that a child with disabilities is integrated into the everyday school life of children without disabilities. Following the integrative principle, there are language classes. Also the perceptibility of the information in the guidance system should be accessible to all pupils. Tactile writing and tactile maps are therefore not designed as a "guidance system for the blind", but also serve the sighted and the large group of people with visual impairments. For this purpose, the texts on general plans and signposts must be displayed with particularly high contrast. Restricted vision is far more common than total blindness, which in turn differentiates between birth blindness, early blindness and later blindness. Whereas in the latter form, letters are usually still learned and their contours are palpable and comprehensible, early blind people usually master the internationally standardized Braille. This is a braille script developed by Louis Braille in 1825, which not only provides orientation for visually impaired people but also ensures that information is accessible to people with limited mobility.
High-contrast floor plans of the school building are displayed on overview boards, the contours of the plans are tactile and arranged on desks that can be accessed by wheelchairs. This makes orientation possible for all children and adults alike. Floor markings are provided by metal plaques attached to the handrails at the beginning of the stairs. There, information on the location can be read in raised relief letters and felt in Braille. Finally, each destination is marked on the door with a door plate, the room number of which can be felt as naturally as it is visually perceptible.
The planners have demonstrated how far integration can be thought of by taking into account the perceptive faculty of a completely different species.Thus, the glass surfaces of the connecting bridge between the sports hall and the school building were laminated with innovative bird protection foils. For humans, the glass panels remain transparent, but for birds they are now recognizable as an obstacle. The surfaces that are gray for birds reflect light in a UV range that humans, unlike birds, do not recognize.