Building for the Future

The ICS Board of Trustees started looking for opportunities to expand the school four years ago. Places at ICS have long been oversubscribed. When it opened its doors in 1960 it had just 84 students from 10 nationalities, now ICS has over 800 students from nearly 50 nationalities and it is bursting at the seams. (And this despite the opening of a new Secondary building in 2000.) We continue to disappoint parents whose children we have had to turn away for space reasons and this is part of a wider issue: there are currently not enough international school places in the greater Zurich area. So the ICS Board has developed a strategic expansion plan.

Second Campus Project

This plan has two phases. The ICS Second Campus Project is an initiative to purchase land and construct a purpose-built Secondary campus in Volketswil (about 15 minutes’ drive from ICS). That will be followed by redeveloping ICS's Zumikon campus into a bespoke primary school.

The Second Campus Project is now well underway. In December 2009, ICS and the City of Zurich executed a conditional agreement for ICS to buy 43,000 square meters of land in Volketswil.

  The Second Campus Project is now at the conceptual design stage and a Building Committee has been established comprised of members of the Board of Trustees and Staff plus a full design team including the architects, site manager, structural engineer, mechanical engineer, electrical engineer, landscape architect, geologist, building physicist, specialists in traffic planning, catering and fire protection systems, and a town planning consultant. In addition, construction advisory firm ECAS AG – which has two decades of experience in managing international school building projects – has also been appointed as client advisor. 

Why Volketswil?

The Board of Trustees and the school administration carried out a detailed evaluation of all the options available for expansion in the Zurich area. It was decided that Volketswil offered the best combination of size, location and accessibility. There are good and frequent train links from Zurich to Schwerzenbach station (closest to the new campus). And ICS is also considering having shuttle buses (and shuttle bikes) between Schwerzenbach station and the new campus, and between Zumikon and the new campus.

Architects

Having identified the site for the new campus, ICS then held an Architectural Competition to select architects to design it. In the search, ICS looked for a firm able to design an attractive campus where high quality ICS education can occur. There was also a clear desire for a campus that embodies the ICS culture and ethos with its diverse, yet strong, community.

In one part of the design brief, former Head of School Michael Matthews wrote: “Perhaps the best way to portray the identity of the school would be by creating a village: a collection of distinct buildings, different in appearance and style, but linked by some unifying feature. The central units (reception, library, and cafeteria) then take on the role of the village square, the gathering and exchange place which everyone passes through the day as they go about their business.

In May 2011 the Competition Jury - helped by feedback from students, staff, and parents - unanimously recommended Duplex Architekten AG, a young architectural practice based in Zurich. Duplex has come up with a design that embraces the ‘village’ concept by having an ensemble of seven buildings. Their design adds three important principles:

  • Human scale: “The campus consists of an arrangement of relatively small buildings that respect and reflect the human scale. This allows for each building to have its own character and identity. Teachers and students can identify with individual buildings and spaces within.”
  • A spatially rich and inspiring environment: “Big plazas, small alleys, classrooms, meeting spaces, shortcuts, secret paths are combined to fulfil needs of students, staff and visitors alike.”
  • Outside spaces are as important as inside spaces: “Each of the three courtyards has a distinct function and identity (arrival space, playground, recreation). Every courtyard connects the surrounding buildings and classrooms to a unit with family-like atmosphere.”
 

Next steps

The next steps will be the completion of the conceptual design and cost estimate in Spring 2012 followed by the submission of the building permit application in Summer 2012.Until the building permit is received, it is difficult to be definite about the future timeline of the project but ICS is optimistic that the new campus could open as early as August 2015.