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Sumit Singhal
Sumit Singhal loves modern architecture. He comes from a family of builders who have built more than 20 projects in the last ten years near Delhi in India. He has recently started writing about the architectural projects that catch his imagination. Marquesa de Alorna School in Lisbon, Portugal by José Neves (designed using AutoCAD)April 11th, 2012 by Sumit Singhal
Article source: José Neves The existing Marquesa de Alorna School, designed by architect José Sobral Blanco in 1956, was one of the 50 schools built in Portugal according to the type promoted by the Construction Board for Secondary and Technical Education in the 1950’s. Like many of these schools, it had two main bodies, one containing the academic and administrative areas, the other containing the gym and cafeteria. The two bodies were linked by the main atrium of the school and the covered playground. In this instance, the set defined a patio surrounded by an amphitheatre-shaped slope with woods, the result from an excavation on the hillside to build the original school. The beauty of the patio has since been disfigured, as the covered playground was closed, cutting the visual relationship between the patio and the city, and as the slope was largely destroyed in order to allow the construction of a parking building owned by a bank.  View from the school courtyard from the new covered playground (Images Courtesy Laura Castro Caldas & Paulo Cintra)
 View of the patio from the restored main staircase of the school (Images Courtesy Laura Castro Caldas & Paulo Cintra)
 The covered playground is designed like a hypostyle room (Images Courtesy Laura Castro Caldas & Paulo Cintra) As part of the “School Modernization Program” of the Parque Escolar, our project provides for two types of intervention, namely: a) in the existing building, the atrium, corridors and stairs, generously proportioned with its floor and wainscots in hydraulic mosaic; the exterior walls in painted plaster; the window frames in painted wood and the roof in flat tiles are restored. The existing classrooms receive new elements to bring more comfort – a suspended ceiling, a window blind, a wall; b) on the other hand, three new bodies are added to the set: 1) A tower with the new laboratories and drawing rooms , west of the existing wing containing the classrooms; 2) A body, designed as a bridge, with the library, links the existing body that contains the gym and the cafeteria to the classrooms. Under this bridge, a covered playground, designed as an outdoor hypostyle room and relating directly to the students room, restore the original visual continuity between the main atrium and the patio of the school; 3) A semi-buried body of shower spaces under the sports field which is protected by a plant structure that partly recovers the green screen earlier realized by the woods.  Images Courtesy Laura Castro Caldas & Paulo Cintra Given a school in which the diversity of spaces and situations was increasingly reduced throughout its history, a sentence of João dos Santos served as a greater stimulus for the project: “If you do not have a village, my son, you have to go in search of it! A boy can not live without his village.”  Images Courtesy Laura Castro Caldas & Paulo Cintra  View of the library's adjacent space inside the bridge (Images Courtesy Laura Castro Caldas & Paulo Cintra)  The space of the library is extended to its adjacent space which is designed as a space of wandering and meeting (Images Courtesy Laura Castro Caldas & Paulo Cintra)  View of the library room (Images Courtesy João Dias (video still))  View of the new library from the playing field (Images Courtesy Laura Castro Caldas & Paulo Cintra)  View of the restored original buildings’ roofs, of the new library and of the city, from the tower (Images Courtesy Laura Castro Caldas & Paulo Cintra)  Design study model (Images Courtesy Laura Castro Caldas & Paulo Cintra)  View of the new library from the playing field. Design study model (Images Courtesy Laura Castro Caldas & Paulo Cintra)  The tower and the woods. Design study model (Images Courtesy Laura Castro Caldas & Paulo Cintra)  Level Plan  Site Plan
Contact José Neves
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