The starting point of the project is the reading of the existing landscape's qualities: the views on the Northern hills, the geometry of the poplar plantation that filters the sight of the the adjacent industrial area, the natural limit of the stream, the congested road from which you have to defend and then get away.
The project is a “landscape-building” in which the characteristic features of the school-world are permeably integrated with the existing natural environment to offer high quality interior and exterior spaces.
The school areas fit into the natural ones making it a “puzzle-building” where the spaces can be transformed by teachers and children to encourage meeting and exchange opportunities. The common areas are open to all sides of the school, as well as to the inner patio.
The classrooms are “private/open rooms” with a glass facade looking at the trees, a small porch that protects them and, thanks to the filtering system that modulates the light placed on the outer edge of the roof, they have also a "private" outdoor space where it is possible to make lessons in different ways. The classrooms are opened to the interior space with a big fanlight, thus improving the distribution of the daylight in the classroom.
The internal/external protected spaces (the entrance porch, the inner patio, the porches where the roof rises to frame the trees, the outer space of the ateliers) allow to play educational and recreational activities in “mediated spaces”, halfway between inside and outside. The encounter, the lesson under a tree, the performance and the party, the motor activities are just a few examples of the possibilities of using such internal/external spaces.
The large suspended ceiling on the green environment is made of a simple, prefabricated, fast-mounting structure, like a game for children. All of the building's edges are set up by a single line of separation: the top-shaded roof. Thus, below the three-meter height, the green of the lawn rises and colors all the architectural elements, enriching the transparency of the large windows; at the top, the large shade-roof defines arcades and protection, it interrupts itself to make light pass-through it and it flips to look for the powerful height of nearby trees. Project materials are thus already identified with this simple rule: green varnish materials up to three meters, dark metal panels and south-facing photovoltaic panels for roofing vertical parts. Photovoltaic panels ensure a subtle difference, reflecting the sky and blurring the view on the side of the entrance. The interior materials offer neutral simplicity, the industrial wood floor, the aluminum and wood windows and the green color accompany the omnipresent views of the outside. The white walls are the frame for the decorations and variables chosen by children and teachers.
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