Publish at June 15 2020 Updated December 07 2022
Long hallways, identical classrooms, high windows to avoid distractions... This is the classic representation we keep of schools. In Italy many actors are calling for a more ambitious vision of the school and its architecture. Pedagogues and architects are shaking up the patterns and trying to make the spaces consistent with a more active pedagogy. Among these actors, Mario Cucinella proposes original solutions that are flexible, modular and open to the environment.
In a recent article, we had shown how social pedagogy castigates "barracks-schools" that set out to protect and distance students from their environment. The school clusters of San Lazzaro di Savena and Calderara di Reno, designed by Mario Cucinella and his teams take the opposite view of this closed and isolated vision of the school. Located in the Bologna region of Italy, surrounded by trees and spread over large areas, they open up to nature and their social environment. -
In a classical design, windows are the object of suspicion. They draw attention outward, they promote distraction. They should let light in, but not let anything show that might distract from the picture. The school spaces designed and built by Mario Cucinella, on the contrary, use large glass surfaces. They allow the view of life outside, of pedestrians crossing the campus and especially of the trees that surround the school. It's about learning in nature, but also through nature.
Mario Cucinella has always thought of his architectures in their social and cultural environment. The architecture highlights the local culture and its richness. His firm has six employees who investigate and study the environment of the projects. They collect data on lifestyles, architectures and the economic and climatic environment. Because Mario Cucinella and his team are sensitive to the concept of sustainable development.
Schools share certain facilities with the neighborhood. Thus, residents can borrow the gym and enjoy the school's restaurant, under conditions that do not disrupt school operations. Access to the campus encourages soft mobility. The San Lazzaro di Savena school cluster includes school facilities, sports facilities with a stadium and a soccer field, as well as an auditorium and a theater.
This openness is effective from the conception and drawing of the plans. Local residents and residents of this city were invited to participate in exchange workshops, around three themes: sustainable development, opening the campus to the outside world and optimizing flows between different users.
Mario Cucinella draws inspiration from great Italian educators. He readily quotes Malaguzzi (1920-1994) who saw architecture as the third educator, after parents and teachers. Loris Malaguzzi defined what has come to be known as the Reggio pedagogy, named after the town where he implemented his principles in 1963. His approach is based on three axes: nature, interaction with the city and the creativity of children. Malaguzzi speaks of the "hundred languages of the child". He has many potentialities, he learns spontaneously and in different contexts, through a multitude of channels. Education must provide an environment that stimulates, inspires and helps the child to make connections.
Nature is very present as an object of study, wonder and curiosity. Children collect elements, plant, mineral or other, which are used in class.
Social life and exchanges are also facilitated by the spaces. Authors such as Marcel Lebrun remind us that training means creating learning situations. Mario Cucinella and Malaguzzi could add that training is also about providing environments that promote learning. Reggio's pedagogy encourages activities in autonomy or in small groups. It relies on flexible and modular layouts. There are areas for individual and group work, as well as visible and accessible resource and documentation areas. The long corridors leading to classrooms are replaced by more spacious circulation spaces that allow for encounters.
Establishing connections, valuing children, multiplying and diversifying learning spaces, adapting and transforming them, is a principle found in the San Lazzaro di Savena school hub. From the conception of the campus, Malaguzzi's vision of the child as a citizen has permeated the project. They have been involved with the other actors. Supervised by an architect, students from the two schools that were grouped together in the campus participated in a workshop led by an architect. At the end of the training course, they were invited to imagine the school of their dreams.
More broadly, the political commitment and participation of personalities such as Isabella Conti, the mayor of San Lazzaro di Savena, as well as the Emilia-Romagna region were essential.
The school has long been a massive, solid and impressive building, with an edifying motto above a massive door. These century-old, unchanging buildings remind us that the principles taught there are solid and cannot be challenged. The school is an institution that organizes, structures around clocks and walls. As early as the 17th century, pedagogues like de Batencour developed a concept based on control: control of time, movement, bodies and spaces. A mechanical organization and gridded spaces were to allow the simultaneous education of many children.
MCA's work instead plays on the possibilities of evolution and transformation. To build sustainably, you have to build flexibly and flexibly, because no one knows how we will be teaching in twenty years. The system is modular, it can be developed and transformed to adapt to the activities: learning, playing, exchanging or experimenting.
These two projects are still in the state of models and plans. They propose a coherence between pedagogy and organization of spaces. They also offer a perspective for school organizations facing new challenges that impact spaces. Thus, these modular spaces are more suitable for multimodal solutions that mix distance learning, face-to-face, blended,...
Article written with Maryse Morin
Illustration: Frédéric Duriez
Resources
On Mario Cucinella and other architects involved in the renovation of school architecture in Italy
MCA, Mario Cucinella architects - the new school in Caldera di Reno - accessed June 13, 2020
https://www.mcarchitects.it/project/new-school-of-calderara-di-reno
Forbes Mario Cucinella - ethical architecture
https://www.forbes.fr/mediasfrance/mario-cucinella-architects-larchitecture-ethique
Alfonso Femia - L'edilizia scolastica italiana non è all'altezza di un Paese moderne. Va rivoluzionata. (School construction in Italy is not up to the standard of a modern country. It needs a revolution!) May 20, 2020
https://thevision.com/architettura/edilizia-scolastica-italiana/
On twitter, the Femia workshops account:https://twitter.com/ateliersfemia
On the San Lazzaro di Savena project:
Site of the Commune of San Lazzaro di Savena - campus kid accessed on June 13, 2020
https://www.comune.sanlazzaro.bo.it/aree-tematiche/territorio/campus-kid/laboratorio-campus-kid
On Malaguzzi:
Elise Mareuil - Early Childhood Pros - Reggio's approach to encouraging all forms of expression in children - highlights - accessed June 13, 2020
https://lesprosdelapetiteenfance.fr/bebes-enfants/psycho-pedagogie/lapproche-reggio-encourager-toutes-les-formes-dexpression-chez-lenfant/les-points-forts-de-lapproche-pedagogique-reggio
The school of my dreams - the Reggio Emilia pedagogy - accessed June 13, 2020
https://www.lecoledemesreves.com/pedagogie-reggio-emilia/
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