L’architecture as an educational space, capable of influencing the cognitive, social and emotional sphere of each student. As a place to meet and share and exchange ideas, conceived as a large covered squarecolourful, bright and adaptable to the different uses of school and city life, where everyone is in continuous relationship with the others and with the surrounding panorama.
These are the distinctive characteristics of the elementary and middle school inaugurated on Friday 31 May Pacentro (AQ), in the heart of the Maiella Park, a UNESCO Geopark. The hub, which is also a civic centre, was born from a participatory planning process, which saw the involvement of the studios MCA – Mario Cucinella Architects And LAP architecture.
The school – Mario Silvestri’s school of desires is its name – was created to relaunch the Pacentro area, affected over the years by progressive depopulation and after the damage suffered by the 2009 earthquake.
Pacentro (Aq), Mario Silvestri School of Desires, photographs by © Walter Vecchio
All teaching environments are developed aroundcentral agora and are defined by large curved, transparent and sliding walls which make them widely flexible and remodular based on the daily needs of school life. Furthermore, the interiors are designed to be in constant dialogue with the outside thanks to the presence of large continuous windows overlooking the surrounding Apennine panorama. The new school complex is also equipped with a canteen designed to be visible and bordered by windows to be a food atelier, so as to promote learning and spread a gastronomic culture among young students.
The roof: a garden with holes to look at the sky
The characterizing element of the new school building is the roof: a discoidal garden roof covered with vegetation resistant to biotic and abiotic stress and designed according to the principles of bioclimatic design, so as to shield the strong summer radiation and to allow the penetration of radiation useful for internal heating during the winter period. The numerous skylights present, however, recall the idea of the “starry sky” and thus respond to the desire expressed by the children of Pacentro to be able to see the vault of heaven from inside their school.
From the outside, the building is partially hidden by the ground thanks to an artificial “dune” that surrounds it like a ring, sheltering it from the wind and gradually revealing it to the view of those approaching along the access route.
The participatory process
«The school is the first school complex built with the funds allocated after the earthquake from the “Scuola d’Abruzzo – Il Futuro in Sicurezza” plan and is the outcome of a participatory planning process that started in August 2015 and ended in December of the same year”, report the two studies MCA and LAP. A path that saw the participation of the associations Viviamolaq, ActionAid and Indire (National Institute of Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research), «over 60 students, 20 teachers and school staff and more than 140 citizens», they still do know the designers.
«Designing a school tailored to the desires of children and the community means taking care of an entire territory, engaging in dialogue and listening to create a place capable of interpreting different aspirations. Architecture has a social role, as it educates and influences learning and relationships: giving the young generations a beautiful, safe, innovative school designed for and with them therefore means helping the little ones to walk towards the future , offer them environments to live in, in which they can have experiences, discover themselves and recognize themselves”he claims Mario Cucinellafounder and project director of MCA.
«The Mario Silvestri Desideri school is an example of how a project involves children, parents, teachers and – more generally – the community is shaped autonomously by their ideas, by their hopes. For us it was a school in the broadest sense, where we learned and applied the principles of participatory and sustainable design. The result is a building that integrates harmoniously with the landscape, that of the Maiella National Park, a UNESCO Geopark, therefore ecological and futuristic. The dream school that becomes reality”he adds Daniel Caramanicoco-founder of LAP architecture.
PROJECT CREDITS
Location: Pacentro (Aq)
Year: 2024
Client: Municipality of Pacentro
Area: 5125 m2
Project: MCA – Mario Cucinella Architects and LAP architecture (preliminary and definitive project); Dunamis Architettura (executive project)
MCA project team – Mario Cucinella Architects
LAP architecture Daniel Caramanico, Federico Sorgi, Simone Esposito, Mauro D’Angelo, Stefano Mont Girbes, Matteo De Marco, Andrea Ciammetti
Consultants
Structural design: Giovanni Accili
Plant design: Marco Santangelo, Rino Antonelli
Participation workshops: ActionAid, Viviamolaq
Visual: MCA Visual, LAP architecture, Dunamis
Photo: Walter Vecchio
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
published on: 03/06/2024
 the center designed by Mario Cucinella Architetcs and LAP Architecture){kind=link}