The village of Nemecká, near Banská Bystrica, was one of the centres of the Slovak National Uprising (SNP) in 1944. At the same time, it became tragically associated with the site of mass executions carried out by members of the German Sicherheitsdienst and Einsatzkommando 14. Several hundred people were killed in the lime kiln, a furnace used for burning limestone. After the war, in 1958, a memorial to the victims of the SNP was erected at the site, designed by academic sculptors Alexander Vika and Klára Patakiová. The architectural design was developed by Marián Beluš, Eduard Stančík, and Alexander Bél.
A new school with a memorial to the young heroes of the SNP, built on the opposite bank of the Hron River, was intended to provide a counterpoint to the memorial of suffering and pain. Its construction was preceded by the rejection of the Alweg project – a monorail in the High Tatras that was intended to replace the original electric railway. Following the project’s rejection by the Czechoslovak government, part of the funds that had been raised was used to build a new elementary school in Nemecká.
The school was designed between 1969 and 1970 by recent graduates of the Faculty of Architecture, Juraj Lupták and Peter Csellágh. In the spatial design of the school, they employed a new pavilion system that had begun to be used for this building typology in the second half of the 20th century. The layout is organised within a rectangular system and divided into two main functional units. One comprises classrooms, specialised classrooms, and a memorial hall; the other contains dining facilities and the physical education section. Each of the thirteen standard classrooms, measuring 8.4 × 8.4 metres and equipped with a roof skylight, has its own acoustically insulated atrium, whose walls are decorated with artworks by students of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design. The school site is located on a slope, which the architects used to create a vertical gradation of the classroom wings and, consequently, a more pronounced sculptural treatment of the façades. The most architecturally distinctive element, however, is the memorial hall, featuring a cast-concrete façade relief by the academic sculptor Ladislav Snopek.
Despite several shortcomings resulting from the failure to adhere to the architects’ original intentions, the elementary school in Nemecká ranks among the most progressive school buildings in Slovakia. It possesses considerable socio-political as well as architectural and artistic value. In 1973, it received the Award of the Association of Slovak Architects.
author of the description: Laura Krišteková
Bibliography:
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ŠLACHTA, Štefan: Škola/pamätník. Projekt 14, 1972, 9, s. 6 – 11.
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