The construction of the Conegliano primary school comes to life, here are the images. Ten classrooms, 250 students will study on over two thousand square meters. 5.3 million euros invested. The steel structure is removable and recyclable at the end of the building’s life, the cork for the flooring is biodegradable. Architect Maria Alessandra Segantini: “A child-friendly building, we have knocked down the walls to build multi-ethnic and multicultural communities”. The works will be completed in January 2025.
Conegliano will soon have a new primary school, surrounded by greenery and at the forefront of energy sustainability and spatial and educational innovation. The construction site has come to life in recent days and is arousing the interest of construction professionals for its choices. The “basic” pieces, i.e. the removable “lego” pieces which will be both the physical and ideal framework of the circular school, have in fact been erected. The images are spectacular and there is a lot of anticipation for the continuation of the works, which should be completed at the beginning of 2025.
The close collaboration between C+S Architects (designers and artistic direction), IA2 Buildings (construction company), Strutture Metalliche di Adriano Fadel (subcontractor and author of the eco-lego), PooEngineering (work management) and the Municipality is one of the key elements of the project: the whole team is committed to play a decisive role in this innovative adventure.
The “Rodari” primary school in Parè di Conegliano, in the Treviso area, will be one of the first in Italy to follow the model of circular and modular spaces designed by the C+S Architects studio. The project, designed by Carlo Cappai and Maria Alessandra Segantini of C+S Architects, recently awarded as the best studio in Italy, is one of the three prototypes of circular schools developed. The studio, which is based between Treviso and London, designed the first “recyclable” schools in Italy: in addition to Conegliano, construction sites are also starting up in Piedmont and Friuli. The Venetian executive project has been approved and costs 5.3 million euros (3 million from Pnrr funds and the remaining 2.3 million financed with its own resources by the Municipality of Conegliano). The building will cover 2,119 square meters and a 6,800 square meter plot: it will include ten classrooms and will accommodate 250 students. The execution, according to the tender, was assigned to the company IA2.
“The internal space explodes in height thanks to a sequence of skylights in the shape of a truncated pyramid, seeking the zenithal light within the system of reticular beams of the roofing structure, which also houses all the plant systems and completely frees up the space on the ground”, summarizes Maria Alessandra Segantini. “From the outside, the school looks like a pavilion in the park. The front is simple: a suspended volume covered in white glass mosaic (recyclable and highly durable material) which rests on a point-like structural system of small steel pillars”.
“We have designed a “space of potential”, where every environment can be transformed by the creativity of the teachers or the community that revolves around it”, declares Carlo Cappai. “All distribution spaces are generous and can be transformed into “spaces for special activities” even during extra-school hours. In this way the school becomes an epicenter for the community and strengthens it.luffs identity”.
The size of the classrooms is more generous than required by law as the experience of C+S Architects in the design of school buildings considers this choice an added value to the teaching potential and the possibility of conforming the classroom space by positioning the desks in a variable way depending on the type of lesson. Located in the northern part of a lot currently occupied by a car park, which overlooks Via Padova, the new school has a circular plan. The project preserves the existing trees: the two rows of lime trees, along Via Padova and the northern border of the lot and the two large cedars of the current public garden, adding new lime trees, birches, persimmons and lavender hedges.
The main entrance leads to a large atrium illuminated by a series of skylights dug into the roof volume. From the atrium, a system of collective spaces, illuminated from the zenith by skylights and structured around two central courtyards, expands in all directions, suggesting the exploration of the common space beyond the frontal lesson, a fundamental pedagogical element in the first approaches to teaching. It is a fluid system, it contracts and expands, generating “spaces of potential” that are flexible and available to the needs and creativity of the community. In particular, a “circular square” opposite the large entrance hall and equipped with a tent is suitable for hosting special and theatrical activities.
The ten classrooms are arranged along the perimeter of the building in a close relationship of visual and physical continuity with the garden, articulating the shell of the school in a jagged and translucent profile beneath a generous projecting roof, which defines a large perimeter portico. In this way each classroom enjoys direct access to the garden and a covered space in front, which can also be used for outdoor activities. The perimeter walls, made up of a layer of translucent honeycomb polycarbonate on the outside and laminated glass on the inside, allow light to filter and softly diffuse inside the classrooms, which will thus be able to enjoy optimal natural lighting. The internal partitions are instead walls equipped with lockers for students, on which large fixed windows open, which visually expand the collective spaces towards the garden.
The theme of environmental sustainability in a school has an undoubted pedagogical value: a highly performing building envelope and a plant system capable of minimizing energy needs will be created. The project involves the use of renewable energy sources thanks to the installation of a large surface of photovoltaic panels on the roofing. The systems will be managed remotely with a BSM system.
Thanks to the use of alternative energies, the construction of a nZEB energy class building is expected. The steel structure is recyclable at the end of the building’s life. The use of cork as a flooring material is a 100% biodegradable, recyclable and renewable natural raw material.
The new Rodari school in Parè di Conegliano is therefore configured as a cultural center that gathers the functional and spatial needs of the primary school, and at the same time amplifies the potential of the common spacestransforming them into places of meeting and exchange for the whole community. In this way it is possible to strengthen the connections between the other two schools present nearby, the parks and public spaces, systematizing the collective spaces and equipment of this part of the city.
THE HISTORY OF C+S Architects
Carlo Cappai and Maria Alessandra Segantini live and work between Treviso and London where the C+S ARCHITECTS studio they founded in Venice in 1994 is based. C+S Architects has been working for many years on the issues of urban and landscape regeneration, including the sustainable regeneration of the 325 hectares of the island of Sant’Erasmo in Venice, the conversion of the Ex-Manifattura Tabacchi and the Fondaco dei Tedeschi just to mention the most renowned, all projects that have won international awards. Associate and full professor of architectural and urban composition respectively, Cappai and Segantini have held courses as visiting professors in various universities including MIT, Cambridge Massachusetts, USA and Syracuse University, NYC, USA and Hasselt University. I am currently a visiting scholar at Cambridge University, UK. Their research on the public spaces of the widespread city which identifies schools as the cornerstones of the project and the corresponding physical impact with the creation of schools, exhibited at the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale, contributed to rewriting the Ministry’s Guidelines on the design of Italian schools. The studio’s design approach traces the construction tradition of the places which derives from the respect and sustainable use of natural resources which the project translates into a new balance between man and nature. In addition to the very recent CNAPP Architect of the Year Award and the Roll of Honor of Architects of San Marino, the firm has obtained international awards, recognition and publications and has presented its work in a series of international institutions, including the MoMA in New York, the RIBA in London, the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Oslo Museum, the MIT in Cambridge and the Milan Triennale.
THE SCHOOLS OF C+S ARCHITECTS
Carlo Cappai and Maria Alessandra Segantini have been working on school building projects for more than twenty years: in 1998 they built their first school complex in Caprino Veronese. Their schools are internationally known, have been used as best practices to write the MIUR guidelines and have been exhibited at the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale. All their schools are Nzeb buildings (Nearly zero energy buildings, i.e. highly energy efficient). Furthermore, new circular school layouts were tested with specific assembly kits, different for the three growth stages of the children.
NURSERY AND NURSERY SCHOOL IN PIEDMONT
Among the ongoing projects worth mentioning are those of the two nursery schools and nursery schools in Venaria Reale, in the province of Turin: the Don Sapino nursery school, which overlooks the Royal Palace of Venaria Reale and the Andersen nursery center inside the garden of the APC Fiordaliso neighbourhood. The first bureaucratic step was the approval of the technical-economic feasibility studies and the assignment of the definitive executive design. The projects are already financed, the budget for now invThe outcome is six million euros. For nursery children the structures are made of wood and build a special relationship with the garden; in the primary school the structure is suspended leaving the entrance to the zenithal light to stimulate exploration; in secondary schools the structure creates sociality thanks to a covered square where all the spaces of the school overlook. The construction process is also innovative: an assembly kit allows you to build the building “dry” and dismantle it at the end of its life by recycling the construction materials, which are wood for the structural parts and cork for the floors.
THE TECHNICAL INSTITUTE IN FRIULI
The third project is that of the new Malignani Technical Institute in Cervignano del Friuli, which will host two sections of the ISIS Malignani, on 2,800 square meters, which will be completed on the adjacent land including all the sports facilities. The project is financed by MIUR (Ministry of Education) for a total cost of 7.5 million euros of which 5.8 million are the construction costs of this phase. The Ministry of Education will directly manage the construction process. The classrooms and public functions overlook a double-height space, flooded with overhead light and covered by an elegant steel structure. The internal square space on the ground floor was designed for students as an informal meeting place. Around this space and oriented to the west, south and east are the laboratories on the ground floor and the classrooms on the first floor, which overlook the garden directly with large windows. Some free volumes have been placed on the large central square: the elevator, the spiral staircase, the structure-volumes of the multifunctional spaces (bar and library).
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