Piazza Garibaldi School, Trevi

Description

The Piazza Garibaldi School in Trevi was conceived for a difficult site at the edge of the historic centre, where the limited size of the area, the steep topography and the visual relationship between town and valley made a single compact block inappropriate. The project therefore breaks the programme into a system of small five-storey volumes, each roughly comparable in plan to the size of a classroom, arranged along a broken central spine of galleries with variable section. In this way the school acquires a scale closer to the surrounding fabric while still accommodating a large educational programme. The revised scheme deliberately increases the fragmentation of the masses in order to obtain greater permeability between Piazza Garibaldi on the north side and the open valley to the south. The fronts of the different blocks step back along a broken line, softening the edge towards the square and preserving the visual cone defined by the road leaving the historic centre. Between one block and the next, full-height glazed intervals and transparent stretches of the gallery spine allow light and views to pass through the complex, so that the building acts not as a barrier but as a porous civic threshold. The central spine is the true ordering device of the composition. Formed by superimposed galleries on five levels, it distributes the elementary school and the middle school, which have separate entrances and can function independently, while also connecting shared facilities placed on the lower levels. Two stairs and two lifts are positioned near the entrances; the west end concludes with an open two-flight stair and the east end with a cylindrical appendage containing sanitary facilities and teachers’ rooms. Administrative spaces occupy the upper levels of the west head block. The programme combines autonomy and sharing. The elementary school, entered from the west through a loggia and filter hall protected by a small square, is organised around fifteen standard classrooms and interclass spaces. The middle school, entered from the north through its own loggia, contains nine classrooms, special rooms, an art room and a music room. At the lower level, a refectory, library, auditorium and gymnasium are conceived as common facilities. The building also defines open spaces at ground level, oriented to the south and protected from the northern winds. Adaptation to the terrain is central to the architectural logic. Part of the five levels is absorbed by the natural differences in ground level, allowing the complex to remain within the height limits and enlarging the available external space with protected areas at the foot of the building. Constructively, the school is based on an anti-seismic reinforced-concrete frame on inverted beams, with carefully detailed brick-faced walls and metal and glass elements. The external walls are clad in smooth, light-coloured solid pressed bricks, laid without visible mortar joints, so that the whole assumes a homogeneous yet changing appearance. Quartz-finish concrete floors, stone details, steel-framed windows and light metal stairs reinforce the project’s material continuity and durability. Taken as a whole, the project proposes a school that is simultaneously topographical and urban: a new civic edge that measures itself against the historic centre through scale, material, permeability and the careful transformation of the slope into a sequence of inhabited levels, galleries and shared spaces.