Valentino Gareri has proposed a sustainable and modular educational building for the new post COVID-19 era. Entitled Tree-House School, the project reinforces the relationship with nature, with connected outdoor and indoor spaces.
As schools around the world re-open, Gareri believes that “primary importance should be given to educational buildings”, after the great lockdown. Introducing a new point of view, the architect proposes an intervention that embraces “the ability-to-sustain the new condition where the pandemic put the entire society in”.
The Tree-House School combines different educational buildings together, such as kindergarten, primary and secondary school, while maintaining their own independence. Looking at a bigger scale, a community center, an urban plaza, a café, and a library are included in the scheme, offering spaces for the entire community. In fact, “the building is operable 24h and becomes an important civic reference and opportunity for the requalification of suburbs and rural areas”.
The school of the future has to be sustainable and, in the same time, able to sustain the new post-covid requirements. It has to be outdoor spaces inclusive and open to nature, made of natural materials and low-cost construction techniques, as modular design. It has to be highly flexible and an able to be adapted to different functions and programs, and provide several benefits to the whole community, becoming the incipit for the requalification of peripheral urban areas. -- Valentino Gareri.
Presenting a modular educational center, all the required spaces are fitted into two rings with two courtyards and an additional usable roof. Made of cross-laminated timber, the modules of 55 sqm each put in place an ideal classroom that can withhold 20/25 students. Designed as a tree-house, the project allows high flexibility and generates a school that is suspended and immerse in nature. Different programs can be adapted and introduced.
Energy self-sufficient, the school of the future encompasses several sustainable devices such as rainwater collections, natural cross-ventilation, and photovoltaic panels, wind energy devices, all located on the higher roof. Actually “sustainability becomes part of the educational experience of the children, who have their first approach to this theme through the building itself”, according to Valentino Gareri.
- Design: Valentino Gareri
- Website: valentinogareri.com
- Parametric modeling: Mirco Bianchini
- Frontal & Roof views: Winston Wu
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