The existing campus of the German School of Geneva in Vernier was extended to the south with an additional building. The new building houses a gymnasium with the locker rooms on the two basement floors, a cafeteria on the first floor and additional classrooms on the two upper floors.
The solid supporting structure consists of fair faced concrete in all public spaces and corridors. The fair faced concrete facade is bush-hammered and was executed in beige lime concrete.
The rectangular plan area of the basement floors varies in width and length from the area of the upper floors, and the vertical loads of the upper floors are supported by a truss in the plane of the façade and on a reinforced concrete slab along the interior building axis above the gymnasium. The truss is composed of the inclined fair faced concrete columns of the facade and two steel chords concreted into the slabs above the ground floor and basement. The girder is storey-high and carries the building loads along the facade plane in the longitudinal direction of the building above the gymnasium over a span of 30 m. The girder is made of reinforced concrete. The inner reinforced concrete slab for supporting the building loads above the gymnasium extends from the ground floor to the 2nd floor and is designed as a perforated fair faced concrete slab with a span of 30m. The two upper floors cantilever about 4.10 m above the first floor at the southern facade. The transfer of vertical loads is ensured there by means of fair faced concrete slabs in the facade levels of the 1st and 2nd floors.
In the basement levels, the exterior walls of the gymnasium in contact with the ground and the floor slab are designed as a watertight concrete structure based on the “gelbe Wanne” or “yellow tub” principle. The building loads are transferred to the soil layers with good bearing capacity on a shallow foundation. The approx. 10 m deep excavation was secured with nail walls.