CNR
Project by FuGa_ Officina dell’Architettura
Architect Francesco Ursitti
Primary and Secondary school
International competition, Milan, Italy, 2010

To think up a schoolhouse means try to find an education system able to start a progressive evolution within the newborn fabric of society.
It means to anticipate, clarify, and justify spatial choices and solutions thought to be able to reach better objectives and new interests.
It means to examine a direction able to connect society to the very complex social apparatus.
Therefore territory and social systems must be perceived and experienced as a unique body; in a global and total vision describing a complete image drawn by limitless tangles and relations which leave no room for occasional chances.
This is our aim.
Education has always been associated to the typology that enhances a horizontal development of territory.
Rules and decrees have confirmed and emphasized this development. This has brought to the realization of models of meeting unified in building blocks, or cellular buildings deriving from it.
Undoubtedly this conformation has a direct relation with the territory which is, however, limited and circumscribed.
There are neither programs nor connections with the context.
Space is isolated and merges into the urban context.
We are always thinking about introvert, close, and reserved spaces.
With our research we wondered how this process of contact could be enlarged.
We have analyzed different arrangements of the considered traditional model to obtain one of it able to trigger new theories and establish new relationships.
After a few steps we focused our attention on a vertical development. The space aggregates and develops vertically, therefore education grows exponentially.
The surrounding becomes free and publicly enjoyable. In this way there is a strong contact with the equipped public area so all society has a relation with the territory.
Students widen their explorative space, find new horizons and points of reference both within the city and landscape.
It is all about deep and intricate visions of reality to enrich and to be enriched with new knowledge.