Description

Originally built in the 1970s, the High School in Caneças is part of the Parque Escolar programme that attempted to establish a new culture for learning in Portugal and indeed standards have risen enormously and over 200 high quality schools have been completed through this programme. Caneças is a fragmented suburb of whitewashed houses and pantile roofs on the periphery of Lisbon with a major highway into Lisbon through the middle – the schools and other public buildings need to act as a centre for the community.

This is an exceptional example of a school completely transformed by architectural design to enhance the student experience of school. New internal circulation spaces and other facilities link the four 1970s flat roofed classroom blocks providing a completely new and exciting sculptural environment allowing students to explore and enjoy. The building actively participates in the learning by challenging children to explore and discover.

The uniformity of materials, chiefly flat white plaster walls, ceiling and hard floor, appears uncompromising but it enhances the sculptural appearance. The columns are reminiscent of a dense and dangerous forest – creating a bewildering and thus stimulating environment completely different from the children’s homes! The complex concrete topography of the new forms weaves around the space between the original 1970s classroom volumes.

The Parc Escolar programme’s idea of the learning street is taken to extremes here. The programme also aspired to make the school more central to the communities and used by the people they serve. There are a series of dynamic inside and outside spaces that are asking to be inhabited and used. The large entrance to the eastside of the school, for instance, has giant relief lettering wrapping around under the soffit, physically pulling the students into the school. There is a public courtyard to the south with a colonnade running around it where one of the teaching pavilions was demolished which forms a generous entrance to the public facilities and connects to another courtyard opening onto a large sports area. This school takes architecture as a physical space where students can learn to explore and to fathom to yet another level.

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Originally published in: Prue Chiles (ed.), Leo Care, Howard Evans, Anna Holder, Claire Kemp, Building Schools: Key Issues for Contemporary Design, Birkhäuser, 2015.