Prague's Saint Augustine School project began 10 years ago as a Christian and Augustinian educational alternative school with a vocational strategy. With a long pedagogy history and practice, with more than 270 schools and 10 universities around the world, the Augustinian school is to be a harmonious synthesis between thought and practice, ideal and reality. The main task of the educator is to support the originality and creativity of each pupil, to help find his own deeper identity - School with all the senses, the mind and the heart.
The architectural solutions for the main existing building were settled in the sense that the new spaces should induct people, in particular the students, to interact and have the continuous sense of human relation with the space and colleagues. Since the entrance door until the classroom, students and teachers are, in continuous visual contact with all the rooms of the same floor. The two main staircases provide natural light through all floors and each floor has a specific color for easy orientation of the users. Transparent glass doors keep the natural light and fluency of the space. The attic was reserved for distinct activities: the library; art, music and computer classrooms; and the chapel, are located here. The existing roof structure, shape and natural light are enthusiastically used to create exceptional spaces or singular lighted shapes. The chapel, as in the past, was built in the east side of the attic, planned according to the sunrise light, where two side cross shaped above the altar, welcome the people from the two possible entrances of the chapel. One row of five skylights, ending on the skylight of St. Rita altar, emphasizes the direction and conclusion of whole path of the school. The limpidness and silence of the chapel provide a unique instant of introspection for the user.
The architecture of the place has to be in line with the whole philosophy of the school planned to be continuously growing until 2023. The first students will graduate from this school that seeks to educate, as its motto says, "with all the senses, mind and heart."
