Design competition -TORINO FA SCUOLA
Architectural design

Team design: Jacopo Favara, Micaela Giordano, Studio Fagnoni Associati - Florence; 
 

The project embodies the principles of an innovative, open, engaging, vital, flexible, interactive, technological, efficient and educational school.
All the ground floor becomes a large space suitable for a mixed use: a gym / theater, a library, a relax area, a dining area, a bar, either for the exclusive use of students, either open to the neighborhood and to the city. School becomes the pivot of social life, offering pleasant places for study, physical activity, meeting, and leisure.
The new library, complemented by the relax area and the bar, becomes the school's "living", a living space where books coexist with newspapers, comics, music, where the kids can stand, listen, talk, study, on informal sittings, around tables, or in private places.
For this reason the entrance of the school is placed in communication with the staircase, while the old entrance allows independent use of the multipurpose gym / theater. The new, larger and straighter entrance has a platform for disable people. The sidewalk is expanded to improve safety during the exit.
The classrooms together with the laboratories are on two floors; they are equipped with selected furnitures to allow maximum flexibility of configuration and to offer several ways of teaching.
The corridors become the places of sociality and relaxation in the rhythm, equipped with soft seating and ergonomic wood benches, natural and durable material, enriched with indoor plants to create a winter garden.
Instead of the canteen, there is an add-on that houses the science lab and the well-being area, overlooking a large terrace for the educational garden. The new addition becomes the programmatic manifesto of the upgrading, giving visibility to the renovation of the school. Only visible from the inner courtyard, the addition is a distinct body that does not alter the peculiarity of the building, light and reversible.
The redevelopment project enhances and maintains the existing qualities, reducing interventions only where necessary:
• floors and fixtures are maintained and restored; all the interventions in the classrooms can be done separately and in a short time
• No structural changes are envisaged
• Energy efficiency is achieved with an internal insulation coat on perimeter walls and corridor boundaries, integrated with low temperature radiant heating and implemented by solar thermal panels, a system that offers better distributed, comfortable, agile and adjustable heating for environment
• The lighting system is renewed with LEDs: in the classrooms with direct light, in the corridors with indirect light, enhancing the archways. A brightness control system will give homogeneity of illumination
• New thermal insulation and sound absorbing ceilings in the classrooms will enhance the soundproofing and will eliminate the reverb.

The interventions with greater economic impact are mitigated by the reduction in management and maintenance costs due to energy efficiency.
In conclusion, the school's facilities are designed to offer to boys and girls an opportunity for growth and education in responsibility:
• The library and media library becomes the main venue where children can empower themselves, entrusting them with the increase of the library / music fund, the library space management, the relax room and the adjacent bar, the organization of social and cultural events;
• cupboards and chairs / coffee tables are personal and everyone will have custody of them;
• The multipurpose room can be used by the students also for self-managed activities