Urban concept

The new boarding school establishes precise space relationships with the context, and to a larger scale, it opens onto the landscape towards Mount Stelvio and the Müstair Valley. A horizontal volume stands against the retaining wall along the North East boundary and it contains the level drop between the uncultivated land on the mountainside and the ground level of the lot. Transversally the lot is occupied by a "U" shaped volume, whose position is gauged in order to determine immediate and simple connections with the South East boundary lots. The construction of the new building generates three types of outdoor spaces: a public space to the South which is intended to be a park in direct relationship both with the residual agricultural land and with the school positioned to the North East; a private courtyard with a garden which all the common facilities overlook; a service area to the North which is dedicated to parking lots, facility premises, and to the loading and unloading area of the kitchen.

Functional aspects

The ground floor of the boarding school houses the common facilities of the fitness room, the canteen, and the study area. The two floors which develop above form a compact and separate block that contains the lodgings, while in the basement of the volume standing against the retaining wall there are the storerooms for the sports equipment and the garage. The main entrance faces South: thanks to its barycentric position, it is possible to control the entrance and the main vertical connection system of the building from the porter’s lodge. The areas dedicated to education and leisure time are situated in the North East side and they look onto the courtyard. The classrooms can be aggregated in various ways with great flexibility. The fitness room stands towards the new park to South East and it opens on Mount Stelvio through a large window wall: its transparency reveals the higher sports education boarding school to the outside world. The canteen is situated on the West side of the building, the kitchen and the storage premises have direct access to the existing roads, while the dining room looks upon the internal courtyard. The boarding school lodgings are situated in a separate block which is independent from the common facilities and thus suitably discrete; in order to guarantee correct exposure to sunlight , the rooms are positioned so as to receive direct sunlight all year round.

Technical and economic aspects
With regards to the structural aspects of the project, we have opted for a solid structure with in-situ cast concrete exterior walls, which will guarantee not only the durability of the building but also its good thermal and acoustic qualities. The high thermic inertia of the walls will assure good standards of performance even with a reduced thickness of insulation.
The structure has been orientated in such a way as to permit optimization of free sun resources, taking care to avoid overheating in the summertime by adopting external screening to reduce sun heat during the periods of maximum insolation. The building has been projected in compliance with all the criteria of the Climate House protocol in order to meet at least Class A standards.