New School of Montebelluna

The school integrates with the context articulating itself in various “pavilions” that come alive among the vegetation, like a “house in the woods” where pupils grow in direct contact with nature, stimulated by a lively environment where interiors and exteriors are in continuity.

This generates welcoming and inclusive educational spaces that put the well-being of students first, but also of teachers and the community. Furthermore then being a place of 360-degree learning, the school represents an essential polarity in the urban fabric creating a new neighborhood, recognizable in the territory and integrated through a series of services and strategies that mitigate the impact of the work, such as materials, colors and planting in continuity with the natural landscape.

The new school complex consists of 6 volumes on a single ground floor level, which are developed organically around a central core with a courtyard (the agora), and configured as monolithic masses with an essential design, well identifiable and functionally differentiated. In this system, a fundamental role is played by the teaching blocks: each of them hosts 1 laboratory and 4 classrooms in close relationship with the external garden due to a “loggia” designed as an “open-air” extension of the teaching space.

The intervention is characterized by the numerous green spaces, such as the garden (with “wooded” areas and an educational garden), the central courtyard and the entrance, a new neighborhood “plaza” for the school community. Each of these spaces, as well as the internal ones, is designed in every detail to function as a “third” educator and become a continuation of the surrounding urban and natural environment.

The child and the respect for his characteristics and emotional well-being is always at the center of every design choice. In fact, the quality of the spaces depends on how these knowledge interact in order to configure environments that take into account the multiple aspects connected to growth.

This is architecturally expressed in the shape of the spaces, in their organization, in the set of sensory perceptions related to light, colors, sounds, tactile suggestions; all elements that remain in the child’s memory, and that influence their future development. Source by Mario Cucinella Architects.

Client: Municipality of  Montebelluna
Type: Competition
Project: Mario Cucinella Architects
Team: Mario Cucinella, Marco Dell’Agli (Project Director), Luca Sandri e Tommaso Bettini (Design Leaders), Angelo Ungarelli , Martina Ruini, Teo Brandi; Elena Biason e Michela Galassi (R&D), Valentina Porceddu (R&D Director).
Visual: Sebastian Beldean, Guglielmo Barberi.
Structural engineering: Francesca Barone e Marco Fontana Ingegneri Associati
Mechanical engineering STIEM ENGINEERING Soc. Coop. aR.L
Geology:  Dr.Paolo Dal Pian
Engineering Ascustic: Ing. Denise Borsoi
Landscape: Arch. Valerio Cozzi