Collegiate identity.

One of the great virtues of the Graz architects is that they can take the kind of bureaucratic programmes that contemporary democratic society demands (for the best of reasons) and turn them into a series of memorable, particular places, rather than faceless and impersonal megastructures. This large specialist school is a prime example of the approach.

Ernst Giselbrecht, who celebrated his 40th birthday during the course of this project, is a leading figure from the third generation of the Graz movement. He trained as a mechanical engineer before turning to architecture, and this is reflected in his work through an interest in details and the way things are assembled. Last year the AR published his Carpenter's School at Murau, where the elaborate roof structure is intended as a visible example of three-dimensional jointing for burgeoning woodworkers (AR January 1994). Here is another much larger educational building with a similar objective: an HTBLA, a technical college for the study of mechanical engineering, automation, and computers.(*)

It ties at Kaindorf, a tiny town in the southern Styrian plain not far from Leibnitz. The winning entry of an invited competition in 1988 which included projects by Kada and Frey, its construction started in 1992, and it opened in the autumn of 1994. A large institution with some 900 students, it is one of only three such colleges in Austria, and they are the only type of college in Austrian higher education that includes workshop experience. The students aged 14-19 come from throughout Styria and beyond. Such institutions are planted in rural locations to bring life and help the local economy. This is a questionable policy, for it generates a lot of travel for most people involved, and when such a school is added to a town of only 2000 inhabitants, it threatens difficulties of scale. One of Giselbrecht's main concerns was therefore not to make the school too overwhelming. He also foresaw the problem of so many students finding somewhere to live and planned an adjacent hostel, but this idea has yet to be taken up.

The site is on the edge of Kaindorf, between fields and suburban houses. To reduce the apparent scale of the building in the landscape, Giselbrecht decided to make it long and low, and to articulate the parts clearly. The central element is a long east-west block with a street-like distributor running down its middle, which expands into wider halls at entrance and junctions. At ground level this main tract contains all central functions including cloakrooms, pupils cafeteria, and staffroom, while administrative offices occupy the western end. The first floor is largely classrooms. From its south side project four single-storey wings of classrooms, between which are semi-enclosed courts for use as break spaces. The most westward of these classroom wings heads through to a large sports hall with associated changing rooms which occupies the south-west corner of the site.

While the south-projecting classrooms mark the realm of theory, practice occupies a couple of further single-storey wings on the north side in the form of mechanical engineering workshops. The western one is skewed 45 degrees from the main spine, but lies perpendicular to the north-western site boundary and approach road. The main entrance follows this shift, and a large funnel-shaped approach court is generated at the west end of the complex, guiding everyone who arrives by vehicle toward the main doors. For Giselbrecht, this space was a very important part of the project, the school's equivalent of an urban square. In the daytime pupils meet there, in the evening sports people, and at the weekend visiting parents coming to see how their children are doing. Out of working hours, it has become a haunt for skateboarders. The court is paved, and its western edge is defined by a flight of steps which prohibits errant vehicles. A tall pylon by the artist Gottfried Bechtold, illuminated in colour by night, gives it a focus, and a kind of artificial shadow of metal plates embedded in the paving leads southward from it across into the building.

Between the two workshop wings is another tapered court, used for delivery of materials. At the north east corner of the complex, a small separate building with telltale chimneys houses the heating plant. On the south side, the external courts look out across a pond and developing gardens towards the outdoor sports area. This links back to the sportshall at the south-west corner.

All buildings are finished externally in white stove-enamelled panels an attempt to unify the complex and to give it an air of lightness. The roofs are all flat, but the one over the spine building projects on its own light structure to create a deep eaves, and to give some protection to the sophisticated outer skin of motorised louvres. The roofscape is also enlivened by projecting rooflights facing north or east, while the sports hall has a continuous north-east facing sawtooth roof which picks up sun only in the early morning when it is not normally in use.

Arriving by car, there is no doubting the location of the entrance at the end of the approach court, with its projecting concrete canopy, columns, and two-storey freestanding glass wall. The detailing is precise and dramatic, and the reflections off the various glass layers make the transition exciting. One enters a generous double-height toplit space which is the crossroads of the school, and the angle-shift in plan gives it the necessary sense of betweenness, allowing it to mediate between the different territories around its edges. The main spine presents itself; it runs both ways, but is also the route to the workshops and to the stair to the first floor, or the fully glazed lift. The large glazed staffroom, caught between the internal street and approach court, lies round to the right, marking the beginning of the administrative west end. The reflections off its two widely spaced layers of glass and its complete acoustic isolation make it seem oddly remote while visually accessible. The student cafeteria is opposite, closed out of hours by large dropping doors. An atmosphere of cool efficiency reigns, with a dominance of hard grey and various natural finishes, but there are flashes of warm colour, and in the classrooms much natural wood.

Legibility of spaces was a clear goal and has been admirably achieved, but for Giselbrecht, it was also vital that details be legible. He was concerned to show how everything fits together, not only as his architectural policy but as part of the educational programme. One can see the primary, secondary and tertiary structure, the servicing, the solar control system, even the applied panels for acoustic damping. For Giselbrecht this is important not only to give an idea of how things work (to give an intuitive sense, for example, of how much a bolt can hold) but also to give some sense of visual integration in design. This is not officially taught to mechanical engineers, though often in Austria they end up designing the products of small firms with no specialist design division.

The building was not achieved without bureaucratic battles with the somewhat conservative ministry officials in Vienna. They criticised it for not looking like a school, for appearing too light when according to them a school needs to appear heavy and therefore reliable, and they did not like the idea of a facade with moveable elements. It took much argument and energetic interventions from Wolfdieter Dreibholz, head of the regional architect's office before the design was accepted and construction allowed to go ahead.

Now, after the award of three architectural prizes, complaint has largely given way to pride. Students using the building are generally positive about it, but staff reaction ranges from wild enthusiasm to contempt. The most discussed aspects, both by resident staff and visiting teachers, are the fully glazed staffroom and the modest windows that allow views from the passages into the classrooms. Giselbrecht was thinking of the need to animate the internal streets, but some of the teachers feel too exposed. Such small and soundproof viewing windows hardly seem bold, and in any case they can easily be masked. We shall be able to analyse views on this question year by year simply by walking round and counting the ratio of windows blocked to those left open.

* HTBLA stands for 'Hohere Technische Bundeslehranstalt fur EDV und Maschinenbau/Automationstechnik', literally 'Higher technical federal college for computing and mechanical engineering including automation'.