2018 MCHAP.emerge
Wish School
Garoa
São Paulo, Brazil
August 2016
PRIMARY AUTHOR
Alexandre Gervásio / Garoa Erico Botteselli / Garoa Lucas Thomé / Garoa Pedro de Bona / Garoa
CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR
Nathália Lorena / Garoa (Architect) Liene Baptista / Garoa (Intern) Thaís Coelho / Garoa (Intern) Vinícius Costa / Garoa (Intern) Caio Vassão (Mediator) Pedro Telecki / Telecki Arquitetura de Projetos (Enginner) Carolina Milani de Oliveira / Olis Estruturas (Enginner) Tristan Bonzon / Bonzon Arquitetura (Landscape Disigner) Kerles Vigo / HV engenharia (Electric Engineer) Rodrigo M. Germano / Eng11 (Hydraulic Consultant) Nelson Solano Vianna / Geros Arquitetura (Thermal and Acoustic Comfort)
CLIENT
Andressa Lutiano
PHOTOGRAPHER
Pedro Emanuel Barcelos Machado Prata
OBJECTIVE
The design process was developed together with the future users to achieve solutions so that the new headquarters could turn out to be a pedagogical reflection. We approach the plant as territory composed of contraction and expansion zones, in which there are frontiers and borders, but they are tenuous, allowing and encouraging transgression, catalyzing children´s imaginative appropriation, understanding children as an active subject and space transformers. The hallways, as spaces that only function is the continuous movement of come and go, do not exist. All environments are expansions of formal classroom and friendly to assimilation of knowledge. Consequently, to get from one point to another, it is possible to choose different paths, different interactions, choose what to find and what not. Classrooms are regarded as points of support for the surroundings, have a non-orthogonal design, generate inflections that unfold, at their edges, spaces that are both continuous and distinct. In addition to formal learning spaces and informal learning spaces, the rooms and their contiguous space, each with its characteristics, aim to meet the diverse demands of open pedagogical environments.
CONTEXT
With a teaching proposal where the classroom is a point of support for the student and not its container, Wish School builds its pedagogy through a overall view of the individual. Physical, emotional, social, cultural, corporeal, creative, intuitive, and spiritual aspects are as important as the rational intellect. Beyond the content of the disciplines, understanding the child's wishes and abilities are used to reframe and firm the child learning. The site contained two connected sheds, built in a terrain with 15 meters of front and 50 of depth, already they had undergone diverse reforms and sheltered different uses. In order to become a school, architects, students and teachers should see a possible architecture in that space. A intervention to update the industrial typology in a device of teaching by the coexistence and mediation.
PERFORMANCE
Limited by a low budget and made possible by the permanent architect crew presence at construction site, the project tools were able to transform the old sheds into flexible spaces. The longitudinal conformity of the building, adjacent to the neighboring lot, required zenith openings and cuts in the slabs, always linked to the vertical circulations, to provide quality light to the ground floor. The use of different materials allowed variation of the brightness filtering, suiting to different program’s needs. The rooms have different degrees of transparency. The fixed closure is translucent, stimulating interaction with the outside. The movable ones have pivoting panels that define the spaces. They support activities that take place around them, serving as a closet, bookshelf and student work, backpack support, instruments, among others. By being moved, they change the configuration of the space around them, expanding the classroom surrounding environments, integrating other activities with needs for more space, or contracting and concentrating for introspection. A survey done by the office through video capture to analyze the post-occupation demonstrates the appropriation of different spaces by students and educators for different activities: classes where a teacher teaches the students, a group of children develops their own research, someone plays a game, make a reading, a practical experience, a meeting or conversation and especially, the collective community. Now instead of loading and unloading trucks, the needy neighborhood has the sound of children in the background.