The project proposes a school seen not only as a space of education but as an active place of the current and future community in the neighborhood built in the 70s. In this sense, the Agora-School concept opens up the opportunity for community relations between the residents of the neighborhood, as temporary users of the main interior and exterior facilities of the two School buildings. The School space thus meets some social and recreational needs of the existing community by providing flexible meeting spaces and community activities, housed in the school’s buildings or carried out in the ample preserved free areas. Interaction outside of educational activities between pupils and other members of the neighborhood community is seen as an opportunity to strengthen the civic spirit and social responsibility of the youngest members of the community.
High school classes are proposed on the southern plot, where the existing building can receive an extension limited by the slope of the land and the smaller dimensions of the yard. The steeper slope of the land can be more easily assimilated by groups of high school students, offering the opportunity for functional identity arrangements.In both situations, protected indoor or outdoor common spaces are proposed, which provide an alternative to the classic didactic activity in the classroom, each adapted to the scale of the different age groups.
For the southern complex (high school classes), a typology is proposed with a multifunctional space on the ground floor of the building, which provides an interior area for breaks, as well as an agora dedicated to the neighborhood community. This generous space on the ground floor is superimposed by the sports hall, which in turn becomes a spatial and architectural attractor in relation to the urban parvis from the neighborhood. The rest of the existing volume of the school is articulated to the two new common spaces through an atrium that concentrates the visual perception of the high school in the core of the ensemble. The schoolyard is activated by the common functions (library and dining room) that enjoy the landscape of the natural setting through generous glazing. At the same time, the layout of the existing classes is preserved, which has ensured fair orientations toward the landscape.