Ponzano primary school: a ‘society building’Winner of the Prize SFIDE 2009 of Italian Ministry of Landscape and Environment
Ponzano primary school is a sustainable building in enegetic, social and cost control meaning.
Energy: Ponzano primary school consumes only 3,6 kwh/mc/year
Society: the design phase was partecipated with children and
teachers
Cost control: The cost of the building including furniture is 1.030
euros/square meter
Inside the sprawl city of the Veneto Region, Ponzano
Primary School is a small clot: part of the building (the gym space) is in fact
accessible by everybody after the school time. In this sense the school becomes
a meeting place for the people of Ponzano community.
Collective spaces are very important in this school
project both in the plan concept (all spaces are gathered around a central
square, memory of monastic cloisters, which, in the past were the places of
knowledge conservation) and in the section concept, as all the spaces face each
other reflecting on transparent and coloured walls (though maintaing their
specificity like the classrooms which are opaque untill cm 130 while, above, a
glass lets children show their works to everybody passing through the common
spaces). This complexity reminds the Veneto model of industrial disticts where
people are incited to learn from each others exchanging experiences.
The school becomes a ‘society building’, a space of
possible multietnic exchange and comparison. It becomes a threshold, like it is
‘transaltion’ in Glissant’s words, a place were to keep together different
languages in their specific meanings, were to keep together a landscape of
memory and a landscape of contemporary.
In this project memory is represented by a remind to
cultivation, the red coloured ‘barchessas’ of the Veneto Region with their
arcades opened toward south. All the ground floor classrooms facing south-east
and south-west are directly opened to this arcade paved in wood in order to
possibly invent special lessons in the open air. The contemporary is linked to
Benetton Factories and their culture of good design and their philosophy
spreading colour democracy all over the world.
In this sense the school architecture becomes the
scenograpy of a dream (of a story would the children say) where the main
characters are the children together with their teachers and the comunity
around the school.
During the design phase we wrote and illustrated a story
to explain the project to the children.
Ponzano primary school is designed for 375 children aged
from 6 to 10. It has 15 classrooms and special classrooms for art, music,
computer, languadge and science, a gym space, a canteen and a library.
On south-east and south-west elevation the classrooms
face as they need to be as well-oriented as possible: in fact they are the
spaces were children spend as much time as possible.
Sustainable
and energy saving principles guided the design.
Thanking
to well-orientation, thick insulation, green roof and sophisticated
technologies (geothermy, photovoltaic panels, natural ventilation chimneys,
building automation system) the school consumes only 3,6 kwh/mc/year,
corresponding to Class A+ of italian law with a building cost of 1.030
euros/square meter including furniture.
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