The Bethel Foundation is the provider of a large number of schools, including secondary school, high school, vocational college and special education schools such as the Mamre-Patmos School in Bielefeld-Bethel, a special school for children and young people with various disabilities.

In the Bodelschwingh Foundation Bethel there is a broad selection of vocational training available for people with and without disabilities. “Everyone has the right to attend a school with individual support and to learn an appropriate occupation. Everyone learns at his or her own pace and achievement potential must therefore be taken into consideration. Learning and access to education remains possible for all persons throughout their lives.”

The Bethel Foundation intends to relocate their current secondary school functions into a bespoke new-build structure to better facilitate these ambitions for the institution.

In this design proposal by HRA; the programme has been arranged into three stepped volumes to create a series of internal and external social spaces to optimise the relationship with the existing adjacent buildings and to provide clear site orientation. Three internal courtyards spin off a central ‘Forum’, at the heart of the new school, while roof-lit atria provide for natural light to the circulation spaces – each atrium has a particular character of its own.