Scuola Elementare Magliaso2020 - Magliaso, Switzerlandcompetition

The contemporary city is quickly and constantly transforming and thanks to the urban fabric and landscape analysis it was possible to individuate the settlement concept for a new school and gym in Magliaso. The volume alignes itself with the pre-exisiting buildings and, if on one hand it creates a special connection with East Magliaso’s hystorical center, on the other one it finds symbiosis with the hill landscape. The building, thanks to its pigmentation, looks like an extension of the hill and fits into the landscape like an in-situ organism, living in its habitat. The choice to locate the project in the northern part of the site, far from via Cantonale, allowed to find a quieter and more protected place next to the kindergarden and to create a stronger educational and public complex. This leads to an inversion: the school, previously adjacent to via Cantonale, gets repositioned further north in the site, so that a “side scene” composed by rows of trees could find place along the street framing and protecting the architecture. Between this artificial forest, containing a sport field, and the building there isn’t wasted space, but a lawn that becomes a new aggregative space for the community, just like an urban square.