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MARQUESA DE ALORNA SCHOOL, LISBOA (2007-2010)
The Marquesa de Alorna School, designed by architect José Sobral Blanco, is one of the 50 schools built in Portugal, according to the type promoted by the Construction Board for Secondary and Technical Education in the 1950’s, being part of the "School Modernization Program" of the Parque Escolar. Like many of these schools, it has two main bodies, one containing the academic and administrative areas, the other containing the gym and cafeteria. The two bodies are linked by the main atrium of the school and the covered playground. In this instance, the set defines a patio surrounded by an amphitheatre-shaped slope with woods, the result from an excavation on the hillside to build the original school. The beauty of the patio has since been disfigured, as the covered playground was closed, cutting the visual relationship between the patio and the city, and as the slope was largely destroyed in order to allow the construction of a parking building owned by a bank.
The project provides for two types of intervention, namely:
a) the existing building is restored: the atrium, corridors and stairs, generously proportioned with its floor and wainscots in hydraulic mosaic; the exterior walls in painted plaster; the window frames in painted wood and the roof in flat tiles. The existing classrooms receive new elements to bring more comfort - a suspended acoustic ceiling, window blinds, a wall;
b) three new bodies are added to the set:
1) a tower with the new laboratories and drawing rooms, west of the existing wing containing the classrooms;
2) a body, designed as a bridge, with the library, links the existing body that contains the gym and the cafeteria to the classrooms. Under this bridge, a covered playground, designed as an outdoor hypostyle room and relating directly to the students room, restore the original visual continuity between the main atrium and the patio of the school;
3) a semi-buried body of spas built under the sports field which is protected by a plant structure that partly recovers the green screen earlier realized by the woods.
Given a school in which the diversity of spaces and situations was increasingly reduced throughout its history, a sentence of João dos Santos served as a greater stimulus for 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, André Matos, Vitor Quaresma, Nuno Florêncio, Filipe Cameira, Hugo Ferreira, Bernardo Enes Dias; João Pernão, Maria Capelo (colour consultants)
Awards and Nominations:
Nominated for SECIL Architecture Award 2012
Selected Habitar Portugal 2009-2011
Publications:
MENESES, Cristina, Prémio SECIL Arquitectura 2012 - Catálogo, Ordem dos Arquitectos, Lisboa, 2013, pp.102-103
BENTO DE ALMEIDA, Patrícia, Escola Marquesa de Alorna, in TOUSSAINT, Michel (ed.), Guia de Arquitectura de Lisboa (1948-2013), A+A Books, Lisboa, 2013, p.126
José Neves, ©portuguese architect: Escola Marquesa de Alorna + Escola Francisco de Arruda, Colecção 1+1, Uzina Books, Lisboa, 2012
Escola Básica Marquesa de Alorna in JORGE, Filipe (coord. ed.), Parque Escolar, 2007-2011, Intervention in 106 Schools, Parque Escolar, EPE, 2011, pp.104-105