Villaggio 1° Maggio school, Rimini (Italy)

Fifteen classrooms, seven workshops, a large staff room, a library/study room and a spacious central atrium. These are the features of the new all-timber school with workshops equipped with movable flexible partition walls to allow them to be adapted to meet various teaching and recreational requirements.

The canteen has been divided into two separate areas to address the needs of the younger children separately from those of the older pupils; the gymnasium is designed to incorporate a small grandstand and it has an adjoining open-air games field; the exterior space is taken up with educational gardens, play areas and areas with garden furniture employed to create recreational corners and an open-air amphitheatre.

The entire project was completed in the record time of just 160 days.

A zero impact school

The result of the work is a near-zero impact school that amply surpasses the stringent criteria for admission to class “A”: with energy consumption of just 0.4 kW/h (class “A” is from 1 to 8 kW/h), a minimum level of consumption remaining only because, being closed during the summer months, the school is unable to fully exploit its photovoltaic systems.

The school is built entirely of wood and is antiseismic, with a layout developed in compliance with the long narrow and articulated shape of the plot, featuring the breakup of volumes with wood screens that are incorporated harmoniously with the proposed outdoor space design, with sound insulating barriers integrated in the outdoor areas in the form of architectural elements in their own right. The school is all-electric, with minimum energy performance rating and peak power of the photovoltaic system of 100 kW, all designed to guarantee a radical reduction on energy consumption. Also the outdoor space will be equipped for teaching purposes.