Designing a new sustainable school in San Severo, Italy

Assignment: Demolition and reconstruction of a public school building

Tasks:  PFTE Technical and Economic Feasibility Project, Detailed Design, Construction site management

We designed a new sustainable school in San Severo (Italy) that is student-centred and features energy-efficient solutions, inclusive educational spaces, and outdoor learning environments.

The intervention required by the tendering body was to demolish and reconstruct the existing building to achieve better seismic, environmental, landscape and energy performance. Our project won the tender and qualified for funding under “Scuola Futura”, a programme of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR).

The new school will provide 1625 square metres of educational space and will accommodate 57 nursery and 206 primary school students, 12 classrooms, 2 laboratories, 1 canteen and extensive outdoor green space.

We designed individual and group spaces for reading and collaboration, informal spaces for resting, and spaces for designing artefacts and multimedia products. This will make the spaces suitable not only for education, but also for socialising and well-being. All spaces are accessible to people with different motor and cognitive abilities, in line with the ‘design for all’ principle.

This school environment is understood as a fluid mix of inside and outside, functional spaces and nature. In fact, the learning spaces extend outdoors through vegetable gardens, which provide opportunities for outdoor learning.

Environmental sustainability

As always, we have combined the functionality of the building with a solid strategy of environmental sustainability and energy efficiency. This consists of several energy, technology and climate protection solutions that interact with each other. The ultimate goal was to create an efficient, resilient and climate-friendly nZEB (Nearly Zero Energy Building).

To design this sustainable school, we used several technical solutions, including

• Solar energy production (covering 88% of the building’s energy needs)
• Strategies to reduce energy consumption, such as attention to the orientation of the building
• Water management system with rainwater reuse for toilet flushing and white water reuse for irrigation of green areas
• Green systems and drainage pavements to mitigate the heat island effect
• Urban drainage solutions such as rain gardens
• Maximise use of sustainable, low CO2 materials.

All of these elements combine to ensure a safe, future-proof and sustainable school for generations to come.