An Innovative School Building Design in the Town of Montemiletto

This paper presents an innovative design for a school building, awarded in the concourse “Scuole innovative”, published by the italian Ministry of Education, University and Research. The new school building is located in a newly built urban area of Montemiletto (Avellino, Italy), at the south-east of the Leonessa castle and the ancient nucleus of the town. The Comprehensive Institute that includes a kindergarten, a primary school and a secondary school, is proposed as a Civic Center, an “urban place”, characterized by new spaces of relationship and aggregation.

The main idea of the project design is the creation of an innovative school with respect to the architectural, structural and plant system aspects and to the energetic efficiency and characterized by the presence of new environments of learning and openness to the territory.

The project proposals can be summarized in the different points: a) unit of the morphological-settlement solution and the articulation of the Civic Center, to be identified as new reference point in the city; b) adherence of the characters of the school to the landscape and visual connection with the castle; c) urban and architectural role of the system of the paths and connections, which surround and enter in the intervention area; d) extension and permeation between the natural and artificial environments assigning to the roof the task of increasing open spaces; e) accentuation of the public and multi-functional character of the different spaces, so that the school can be a place for meeting and comparison, in which it is possible to test new ways of teaching; f) use of different types of green open spaces as gardens, flowerbeds, educational vegetable gardens that change with the seasons, sporting fields, cycle-forgave routes among the green. Moreover, with respect to the structural aspects, seismic isolation at the basis of the building is proposed. This paper focuses mainly on the aspects related to energy and environmental sustainability and life cycle cost with reference to the case study design. The goal is to reduce the impact on the ecosystem, trying to make the school building organic to the existing environment. The containment of energy consumption for the air conditioning of the rooms is done through the isolation of the massive walls of the façade, covered with local stone (Irpinia breccia) and polycarbonate. Water-saving is obtained by reusing rainwater for the irrigation of vegetable gardens, vegetation and sanitary use.

The use of recycled materials and components is proposed: the Irpinia breccia covering the façade and, with different grain sizes, the external roofing and flooring; the polycarbonate; the polyester insulation; the outdoor furniture in recycled wood. In addition, dry reinforced concrete construction technologies are chosen. Definitively, the main concept is to have “a school in the park”.