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FRANCISCO DE ARRUDA SCHOOL, LISBOA (2008-2011)
It is, as in the case of the Marquesa de Alorna School, a project within the "School Modernization Program" sponsored by the Parque Escolar, for a school originally designed by the Construction Board for Secondary and Technical Education, in the 1950’s. In this case, the three bodies that constitute the school, originally designed by architect José António Pedroso, are situated on the hillside in the continuity of the Faculty of Agronomy fields, overlooking the district of Alcântara. Taking for granted a street designed but never realized – the "hillside way " – the main entrance of the school remained facing the fields on the north slope, and the entry that was originally designed as the secondary entrance, at the opposite end of the enclosure and facing the Calçada da Tapada, was adopted as the main entry. This resulted in a major feature of the school: the first impression is of a garden.
The original building, spread across three platforms pragmatically modelled on the hill, is organized around a central patio and has three bodies each with its own functions - teaching, administration, and covered playground; gym and cafeteria; workshops - linked through covered outdoor galleries. These bodies, with very different shapes, were taken by us as if they had been built over time, making a little city. Our project quietly continues this process.
For the outdoor areas, of unusually generous dimensions, the project underlines the continuity of the vegetation of the fields through new plantations, in order to emphasize the sense of the site as a public garden. The staircase that we designed, opening an existing cul-de-sac to connect the central patio to the old Pátio das Caravelas situated on the top platform, as well as the direct connection created between the new library and the sports fields across the covered playground, are both transformations that help to emphasize the sense of the whole as a public garden and profoundly shape the daily living in the school.
On the other hand, the original buildings are restored as well as adapted to new needs, through minimum interventions, particularly in the external form and the finishes of the interior spaces.
Finally, three new elements are added:
a) a long two-storey building completes the outline of the original patio. It is discovered after a short path through the garden, as the new school entrance. Designed as a public gallery, meeting and study space, along the courtyard - as a sheltered stoa - this building contains the new library on the ground floor and the new laboratories on the top floor, facing, eastward, the gardens of the school, the neighbouring fields and the city;
b) the spas are built under the old Pátio das Caravelas between the existing gym and the new covered sports field that is situated in one of the high platforms of the site;
c) the original main atrium, never used as one, is now the atrium of a small multipurpose room, designed as a garden pavilion, which the population of the school calls "magic cube".
Given the beauty of the original Francisco de Arruda School situation, once again the clear and direct words of João dos Santos served as a greater stimulus to the project: "What is important in education, first of all, is the natural and aesthetically harmonious environment in which it takes place.
Design Team:
Architecture: José Neves
Collaborators: Rui Sousa Pinto, Ana Belo, André Matos, Filipe Cameira, Nuno Florêncio, Steven Evans, Vitor Quaresma, Martim Enes Dias; João Pernão, Maria Capelo (colour consultants)
Publications:
SPIRITO, Gianpaola e MENGHINI , Anna Bruna, Tra La Scopa e La Cattedrale, Una Scuola a Lisbona in (ed.) in Rassegna Architettura e Urbanistica N. 159 (Settembre-Dicembre 2019), Lisbona, Trasformazioni Urbane Negli Anni Della Crisi, Roma, 2019, Pp. 53-60
SPIRITO, Gianpaola, La Riabilitazione Urbana di Lisbona Attraverso Interventi di Architettura Sul Patrimonio in Alberto Calderoni, Bruna Di Palma, Antonio Nitti, Gaspare Oliva (ed.) Il Progetto di Architettura come Intersezione di saperi, per una nozione rinnovata di Patrimonio, atti dell’viii
Forum Proarch, Società Scientifica nazionale dei docenti ICAR 14,15, 16, Napoli, 2019, pp. 186-190
Casabella, nº 839-840, pp. 16-17
CARDOSO, Joana Amaral, A Aldeia Do Arquitecto in Jornal Público - P2, 10 Novembro 2013, pp. 32-37
ARQA- Arquitectura E Arte, Setembro/Outubro 2013, Ano IV, nº109, pp. 89-99
MENESES, Cristina, PRÉMIO SECIL ARQUITECTURA 2012 - CATÁLOGO, Ordem dos Arquitectos, Lisboa, 2013, p.102-10
José Neves, ©portuguese architect: Escola Marquesa de Alorna + Escola Francisco de Arruda, Colecção 1+1, Uzina Books, Lisboa, 2012 p
CAMPOS, Nuno e MATOS, Patrícia, (ed.), Guia De Arquitectura: Espaços E Edifícios Reabilitados, Traço Alternativo – Arquitectos Associados Lda., Porto, 2012. p. 117
JORGE, Filipe (coord. Ed.) in Parque Escolar, 2007-2011, Intervention in 106 Schools, Parque Escolar, EPE, 2011, p.104-105.
TOUSSAINT, Michel e MELO, Maria, Mapa de Arquitetura de Lisboa / Lisbon Architectural Map 1948-2019, A+A Books, Lisboa, 2019