SCHOOL IN BIASSONO
Location_Biassono, Monza Brianza
Year_2025
Area_7450 sqm
Client_Comune di Biassono
Service_Design competition
The purpose of building a new school is tied to the goal of architecturally translating the wave of pedagogical innovation of our time. From the classroom to the overall design of the building, the new school is a sensorially stimulating place for children to grow. The old twentieth-century approach, based on order and discipline, is giving way to an approach tailored to the most advanced knowledge of the child psyche.
Urban and Landscape design
The lot identified by the tender is not an “urban wasteland,” but rather a place with its own recognizable shape and aesthetic impact: a vast, regular square lawn amidst numerous small-scale developments. The project aims to preserve this geometric power, the tetragonal beauty of the big lawn. It does so by incorporating the square shape into the project and leaving the center of the lot empty.
Biassono is a town composed of low buildings interspersed with abundant vegetation. Despite the scale of the requested program, we conceived a school of limited height, extending horizontally to blend harmoniously into the volumetric profile of the surrounding urban fabric. The future primary school is intended to be, first and foremost, a public place. The community investment in build a new school is justified not only by the need for new learning environments that keep pace with evolving pedagogy, but also by the ability to provide new spaces for local communities. For this reason, the school is conceived as an authentic civic center whose layout is like a traditional farmhouses of Brianza: a large farmyard surrounded by porticoes. The morphological similarities are naturally limited to geometric abstraction; there is no concession to historical revival. On the contrary, the building expresses a contemporary and iconic language, recognizable as an architectural landmark by all residents.
Educational Innovation
The purpose of building a new school is to architecturally translate the current wave of pedagogical innovation. From the classroom to the overall design of the building, the new school is a sensorially stimulating place for children to grow.
The old twentieth-century approach, based on order and discipline, is giving way to an approach tailored to the most advanced knowledge of the child psyche.
A Civic Center
The traditional development concept, based on occupying the central portion of a fenced lot with buildings and leaving green spaces at the edges is replaced by another gesture. Like a large embrace, the built area is concentrated on the lateral areas, leaving the center free with all the functions that gravitate around it. In this way, the community space takes the center stage, with the shared functions of the library, café, gym, and access to the park, concentrated toward the entrance.
A park above the building
The request to establish a “Generations Park” led to the creation of a large public garden on the school’s roof. This garden rises from the sidewalk level of the entrance portico, as if the ground were carved into the shape of the school and lifted upward from just one end of the footprint outline. Lifting beyond the traditional building vs. nature opposition that characterizes every new construction on virgin land. The school is simultaneously a building and a planted, draining soil.
The Periscope
Working as a visual elevation device, the green roof park allows children and adults to gain a unique perspective of their city and the surrounding landscape. The park’s summit breaks through the low elevation of the surrounding buildings, offering a surprising view of the nearby Monza Park, the skyscrapers of Milan, and, further away, the magnificent Alpine arc.