A hill in clay

Also known as The School on the Hill, the New Dybkær School became a vital hub for community and pupils of the small Danish town of Gødvad. As it resembles a hill itself, the architects carefully selected suitable building materials.

Built for the town

Sitting atop on a hill in Gødvad, the New Dybkær School has become exactly the vital community hub that the architects intended. Located just outside the Danish “outdoor-capital” Silkeborg and nestled in the lake-district Søhøjlandet, the new school building was inspired by the surrounding nature with its characteristic forests, lakes, and rolling hills.

Awarded School of the Year 2024, the building was designed to foster togetherness and bridging education with local life: “Modern schools are often given a new meaning beyond simply being a place of education. They need to serve the local community as well,” explains Nikolaj Effert Jonassen, architect at Sweco Denmark.

Inspired by the slope

“The hills are part of the city’s DNA, and we were inspired by the dramatic terrain,” Jonassen says. The building mirrors the rolling topography of Søhøjlandet: along the edges, the volumes remain low, connecting the indoor and outdoor areas, while toward the centre the structure rises like a slope towards a peak.

Outdoor classrooms and opportunities for active exploration were designed to blur the line between interior and exterior learning. Historic photographs of local children reinforced the idea: “Photographs of children playing at the foot of the slope inspired us to incorporate the hills as active design elements. These create opportunities for play, movement, and curiosity,” Jonassen adds.

Brick and coherence

Clay, deeply embedded in Denmark’s landscape and building tradition, became the natural material for translating this terrain into architecture. Metal details and wooden columns add variety, the latter providing both passive solar shading and a sense of warmth and tactility. The architects selected the EW2207 in Red Dark. Combined with a matching red joint, the façade creates a harmonious, warm and uniform surface balancing out the hills in the landscape and radiating tranquillity. The colour also grounds the school in its local context. Bricks – and in particular red bricks – have always played a vital role in Danish architecture:

“Red bricks are characteristic of Silkeborg’s city centre and Danish building practices in general. Therefore, it was an obvious choice for the school’s façade,” says Jonassen. With their soft-sand texture and matching joints, the bricks create a harmonious appearance while reinforcing the school’s connection to the surrounding landscape. As Jonassen concludes: “What is more natural in Denmark than working with clay as the ‘hill’ material?”