With about 4,500 square meters of permeable surfaces and 3,659 square meters allocated for about 382 students in the Barriera di Milano neighborhood, the N. Bobbio school in Turin will return to the city with added value. The project, winner of the national “Nuove Scuole – Futura” Italian competition under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, aims to foster integration within the surrounding urban context. A compact volume, three levels above ground, slightly set back and rotated, allows the public space in front to expand toward the school and, at the same time, ensures the possibility of creating a large green courtyard on the opposite side, balancing the relationship between these two spaces and allowing the preservation of existing trees, the planting of new essences and the promotion of soft mobility through the inclusion of the bike path and the reduction of vehicular speed through “traffic calming” zone.
The new arrangement of the public space thus determines a filter towards the roadway, guaranteeing full accessibility, usability and safety for users with limited agility. It is a filter space that, through the use of pavements and plant species typical of Turin’s urban habitat, stands in continuity with the surrounding urban context, allowing visual permeability and easy maintenance. The new school makes explicit its role as a civic center in the territory by projecting itself toward its community through the inclusion on the north side of a transversal volume, which invites people to enter and houses the functions of the civic center understood as a Community Lab: library/media library, gymnasium and multifunctional spaces.
