Marco Martello School at Petriolo

Located just outside the historical nucleus of Petriolo, the site sits at the end of the ridge atop with the town was built. Despite its proximity, the site resembles a protected campus enclosed by a row of buildings that separate it from Via della Pace and Via Leopardi, wrapping it on three sides and providing access to the school.

The new building is grafted onto the site alongside the primary school though without being attached to it. This creates a green corridor that physically and visually links up with the sports centre behind it with the southern elevation of the school.

The architectural parti is a dynamic geometrical arrangement of simple volumes – identifiable in the design of the roofs – whose composition establishes a continuous relationship between interior and exterior. Two stories in height above the entrance level, it drops to one storey, partially underground, at the level of the playing fields.

The main volume is topped by a “shed” roof, set at 45° with respect to the square base to orient the windows along the north-west axis and fill the interiors with diffuse lighting. The ground floor, organised entirely along the same axis, is defined by an alternation of linear piers in pigmented concrete and large windows.

The auditorium is the fulcrum of the building. It wraps around the entry axis, whose ends are marked by vertical connections that provide direct access to the two clusters on the upper level: flexible spaces, organised and welcoming, designed as a “learning landscape”, without rigid functional hierarchies, and defined by a succession of fluid and continuous environments. A circular path winding around the central volume integrates the functions located on the ground floor, maintaining visual contact with the outside. Where the building touches the ground at the perimeter it generates hybrid spaces with multipurpose environments contaminated by direct contact with the park.

Skylights create a decisive profile to the exterior elevations that makes this brick building easily recognisable. Widely used in the area, brick was adopted here as a continuous rainscreen with permeable sections created by “expanded” courses.