Lead. A new elementary school and adjacent kindergarten on the wetland edge of Trondheim, designed as a single circular ring around an open landscape heart. The building works as a lid on the site — a low timber halo that protects a central garden inside it, while everything else looks inward toward the green.

Site & brief. The site sits on a flat heath at the edge of Trondheim — mountain views, scattered farms, weather from every direction. The brief asked for a primary school, kindergarten, multi-purpose hall, library, auditorium, and after-school programme together: a 12,000 m² complex serving three age groups and designed to carry a Norwegian school year through long winters.

Idea. Klasserom organisert rond grønt og åpen hjerterom — sosial samhandling i midten. Classrooms around a green, open heart-room — social interaction in the middle. Every classroom faces the same central garden, Steinhagen (the Stone Garden), which rises in soft topographic mounds inside the building. The school's social life happens inside the architecture rather than along corridors.

Resolution. Classrooms group by year along the perimeter; shared learning, library, and administration distribute around the inner edge. Stair towers and entries cross the ring radially, so it's reachable from any direction. A multi-purpose hall slips beneath the ring on one side, anchoring it to the ground. Dark vertical timber battens outside, warm plywood and vertical screens inside, acoustic spheres in the social zones. The adjacent kindergarten is a smaller ring of the same family — same logic at child scale.