Asilo a Siracusa

Kindergarten is the place where the first social relationships are built, outside the protected context of the family. A place where we begin toknow the other, the institution, the authority of adults who are not part of our intimate circle, and where we become aware of our being individuals within a community that extends well beyond the home walls.

For this reason, the project proposes an analogy between the spaces of the school and that of a village, appropriate for a place where it is possible to identify one’s own spaces and at the same time understand how they are part of a much wider community, gathering the various functions of the school – the canteen, the gym and the three sections – around a central covered space like the buildings facing the central square of a village, with their specific position and identity.

The structure with prefabricated concrete vaults allows perceptively to fragment the building block into a summation of compositional units that can be varied in the shape of the openings and facings, to characterize and identify the various functions of the school, with multiple references to elements of the built Mediterranean landscape.