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TURIN IS SCHOOL

COMPETITION FOR THE DESIGN OF THE RENOVATION AND REORGANIZATION OF THE ENRICO FERMI SECONDARY SCHOOL

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Project team:

1. Paolo Galantini (Team Leader)

2. Marco Biondi

3. Francesca Serpa

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Place: Turin

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THE SCHOOL AS A COMMUNITY AND CIVIC CENTER

The dialogue between architecture and pedagogy allows us to anticipate changes in society and to imagine learning spaces as a metaphor for the world. Therefore, the creation of fluid spaces, such as the flows of information and knowledge in the era of global communication, become the support for the changing educational process and can, in turn, become an instrument for the creation of a new society.

Bruno Zevi argued that conceiving architecture as a place of interaction must be our mission as architects creators of spaces. The idea of a new vision of the school as a focal point within the socio-cultural fabric of the city was therefore the starting point of our reflection.

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THE CONTINUITY of STRATIFICATIONS

Each place is an image of the company that produces it and is characterized by a series of natural and anthropogenic signs stratified over time. Our task as designers was to create a future vision but in continuity with the past.

By reading the existing traces, we have tried to bring out the character of the place and its potential, proposing targeted interventions within a historical / urban continuity / coherence.

On the one hand, therefore, the rarefied system of the agricultural network and on the other the structured and compact system of the nineteenth-century urban block (urbanblock). From the reading of these historical stratifications we can today read the elements of continuity and those of discontinuity of the urban fabric. Examining the project area, it seems clear to us that this block has been resolved in discontinuity with respect to the past.

Our idea is therefore to mend the tear and to suggest rather than re-propose a solution of continuity with respect to the past.

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THE PROJECT IDEA

The project was developed following and relating these two aspects: the idea of school as an expression of the socio-cultural reality of the city and the world, and the search for a solution of continuity and identification with the place. Result: a project that affirms its roots in history through the identity component of the place and that affirms itself in the socio-cultural-urban context.

Just as in the age of transition towards adolescence in which the need for autonomy and affirmation is increasingly felt, so the project proposes and suggests, on various levels, the theme of Gradual and rarefied transition, of the transformation and of transition.

The two main actions translate with:  

  • Re-definition of urbanblock in the skilful game of solids and voids, through:

    • treatment of the external spaces and definition of the greenery (on the east, south and west side of the lot): along the east, south sides, at the corner of the block between piazza Giacomini and the main entrance of the school, the main directions of the historic agricultural parcels

    • two building integration / expansion interventions (on the north and east side of the lot)

  • Elimination of the enclosure wall on the side of Piazza Giacomini, allowing the school to open towards the city and expand the public space; the city enters the school and the school advances towards the city. The boundary between the school and the public space is no longer clearly defined and allows greater permeability while maintaining a necessary degree of safety.

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THE OPERATION OF THE BUILDING

The internal spaces of the school have been reorganized following the functional program of the feasibility study as guidelines and respecting the standards of the Ministerial Decree of 18 December 1975 and of Law 23/1996. The environments that are currently used by external members (senior center and Keller school) will also be returned to the school. Despite this, the area of the library, the canteen and the gym can be used outside school hours with reserved access to the outside, always with a view to opening the school to the city.

The parking lots were sized according to the Law of 24 March 1989, n. 122 and decreased by 10% considering the proximity of bus and metro stops. In this way it was possible to obtain space for the outdoor dining room. There is also the inclusion of a parking space for bicycles.

 

MATERIALS AND TECHNICAL SOLUTIONS

A complete retrofit of the structure was chosen to compensate for the high heat losses of the current infills and fixtures and to restore a new image of the school (metamorphosis).

An external coat will be created that will redevelop the building by decreasing the annual energy requirement for air conditioning.

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