Status: Competition entry.
Client: Municipality of Milan.
Location: Milan, Italy.
Team: Toufic Rifai with OBR “Open building Research”, MIC Mobility in Chain, LAND.srl.

The Scialoia School Complex will be a place of education for everyone, child-friendly and teacher-friendly, fostering experiences of solidarity and democratic coexistence and, at the same time, that encourages the recognition of one's individuality and uniqueness.

The complex, consisting of pavilions in close visual connection between them, works to mend the existing heterogeneous urban fabric, enhancing the urban axes and respecting the alignments of the blocks. The alternation between full and empty spaces, between green and built-up spaces, generates a family sequence of four pavilions that define courts greens for outdoor activities. Each school pavilion (nursery, nursery, primary, secondary) has its own well-defined entrance to preserve the specific individuality of children in different stages of growth, while the “agora” - common spaces between two contiguous pavilions - are the places where children can socialize and exchange experiences, increasing the “Sense of belonging” to the school structure and becoming familiar with the growth path that awaits them.
Through the pairing of pavilions-courts, an ecosystem is created in which children will grow by developing a sense of responsibility towards nature. By configuring the common services of the School Complex (gym, lecture hall, library) that overlook the accessible spaces public of the agora, the project blurs the "threshold effect" of the public institution in favor of the neighborhood community, stimulating the sense of civic belonging and participation in the path of children's growth.