Primary School and Kindergarten, Olbia

Design competition for the construction of innovative schools – Municipality of Olbia – second prize

The project area is located opposite the parvis of a newly constructed church.
The insertion of the new school deeply changes the urban design that considered the construction area as free space in front of the place of worship.
The school’s volumes occupy only a portion of the surface area and open the perspective out towards the parvis. The diagonal path is redesigned to serve the access to the school that opens out onto a central square. The entrances are located in a small-volume cloister/square connected to a square/playground, halfway along the pedestrian path.
The kindergarten is smaller and develops only on the ground floor. The primary school has two storeys, with evident diversification between civil center on the ground floor and educational spaces on the first floor. At the heart of the kindergarten is an internal square connected to an atelier. The three sections open out onto the garden and are united by transversal links. Towards the interior they extend into areas for meals, underlined by small patios.
The rooms of the primary school cluster around a system of shared spaces hinging two wide stairways, an internal one and an external one. On the first floor, the classrooms and workshops are arranged around the wide stairways and the large terrace that leads to the garden located at the centre of the educational space. The classrooms are partially transparent and connected by apertures. The distributive space is non-linear, consisting of niches and bends with meeting and educational areas.
The architecture lacks any stereotypical images related to the world of children. The project tends towards the creation of a context that favours rich and diversified relations between the spaces, between the interior and the exterior, between activities and between people.