The project works over what has already been built from two different approaches: The first intervention consists of the updating of the existing architecture to the minimum standards of the current times. The second approach is the addition of new bodies, each with its own identity and functions: a tower of laboratories and drawing rooms, a library-bridge and a half-buried spa.
Description of the project by José Neves
The existing Marquesa de Alorna School, designed by architect José Sobral Blanco in 1956, was one of the 50 schools built in Portugal according to the type promoted by the Construction Board for Secondary and Technical Education in the 1950’s
As part of the "School Modernization Program" of the Parque Escolar, our project provides for two types of intervention, namely:
a) In the existing building, the atrium, corridors and stairs, generously proportioned with its floor and wainscots in hydraulic mosaic; the exterior walls in painted plaster; the window frames in painted wood and the roof in flat tiles are restored. The existing classrooms receive new elements to bring more comfort - a suspended ceiling, a window blind, a wall;
b) On the other hand, three new bodies are added to the set:
1) A tower with the new laboratories and drawing rooms, west of the existing wing containing the classrooms;
2) A body, designed as a bridge, with the library, links the existing body that contains the gym and the cafeteria to the classrooms. Under this bridge, a covered playground, designed as an outdoor hypostyle room and relating directly to the students room, restore the original visual continuity between the main atrium and the patio of the school;
3) A semi-buried body of spas under the sports field which is protected by a plant structure that partly recovers the green screen earlier realized by the woods.