Istituto comprensivo «G.Renier» .

The design of the new school spaces and the renovation of the existing ones that are part of the project for the expansion of the “G.Renier” comprehensive institute, refer to a highly innovative concept of school, the result of a path of evolution of pedagogical thinking that has brought great changes in the approach to teaching, requiring a necessary adjustment of the spaces dedicated to it. Every day we have experiences related to the nature of the space we inhabit, and we rarely stop to scrutinize the subtle links that connect our states of mind with the spaces we perceive, but we are certain that that particular architectural environment that has housed us for a more or less brief period of time has produced in us a state of well-being or discomfort. Therefore, the intended environments are considered as one of the descriptive categories of the educational context, where children are active protagonists of their own educational journey. Prominent element and focus of the proposal was the entrance hall understood as the space of the school community, the beating heart of the complex. It consisted of a large, flexible, multipurpose space around which the other environments were developed; a place that fostered social relations between adults and children and peer and intergenerational relationships. For these reasons, the choice was made to provide unstructured furniture, soft and informal seating that could also be adapted for public presentation and discussion, collective viewings and plenary discussion.Above the entrance hall, centrally located, immediately recognizable conceived with a structure cantilevered from the school plexus, was the auditorium. The form of the latter was deliberately contrasting with the existing context in order to be able to constitute an attractive element that would aesthetically and emotionally characterize the entire school complex, generating a symbol that could make the structure as special, original and exclusive as the activities that would take place within it. The interior environments of the proposed project was designed to strongly express a pedagogical contemporaneity in understanding the relationship between children and space. The intention was to overcome the concept of the centrality of the schoolroom as an elective and unique space designated for learning by showing it instead as one of many possible solutions within a wide range of school environments that can offer tools and solutions for differentiated activities. With this basic idea, it is possible to replace the classroom model with that of the diffuse learning environment, that is, made up of flexibly structured spaces equipped for observation, experimentation, transformation and the creation of new contexts equipped with furniture, modular seating and work tables, partitions made up of sliding panels so that within them diversified and multidisciplinary activities can be carried out according to the need of the moment. In this configuration, transitional areas (distributive spaces, corridors etc.) can be seen as “niche” spaces in which the subjective imagination can rest for a moment, sheltered from rationality: they are spaces suitable for reading, listening, resting, and informal gathering. Given the presence of the existing green courtyard, on which the intervention that was the subject of the design proposal “turned,” it was chosen to strongly link the interior and exterior, extending one toward the other in search of a kind of interpenetration. Therefore, the design included full-height glazing in order to allow visual continuity and a fusion of spaces. Such a solution, moreover, allowed contact with nature which assumed a fundamental educational value, going to contribute to the formation of privileged environments for learning as well as responding to a primary human need. The architecture of the school would be in close relationship with the outdoor environment, allowing children to experience the changing climate, the seasons and the rhythmic flow of the day.

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