Oscar Paret School, Freiberg

Ten kilometres of frame finishing, five kilometres of skirting boards in the window areas, countless individually drilled millimetre-precise acoustic panels for wall cladding, plus more than thirty glass display cases in a wide range of dimensions, all prefabricated and installed in over four thousand assembly hours – behind these figures for the interior fit-out of the Oscar-Paret-Schule lie craftsmanship precision, plenty of experience and the infrastructure of Westermann.

The largest part of the contract was the interior cladding of the window frames throughout the whole school building. Tolerances in the façade and masonry were compensated for with continuous surrounding panels. Using the survey data taken from the structure, the frames in HPL-coated panels – about a third of which were non-combustible – were prefabricated at Westermann’s Denkendorf site and installed on schedule.

The wall cladding consists of acoustically effective HPL panels which divide the campus into zones with their colour scheme, simultaneously serving as a wayfinding system and underlining the building’s clear, straightforward character. Particularly noteworthy is the approach to mounting the panels: at the architects’ request, they were fixed with visible screws. To achieve this, every panel had to be individually marked out and drilled so that it sat precisely in the substructure while harmonising with the perforation pattern of the respective panel. Some of the panels are likewise non-combustible, which – due to the special material – requires a different production and fastening process.

The glass display cases in the fire-protection zones also had to be designed and manufactured from non-combustible components. For the user, all display cases look identical: they are equipped with lockable sliding doors, magnetic on the inside and illuminated.