Karri Loop House
Margaret River, Australia - 2013 Photography: First three photos from Giulio Aristide - Peter Bennetts
BDRbureau
is an architectural office based in Turin, Italy, and it was founded by Alberto Bottero and Simona Della Rocca.
Fermi Secondary School
Turin, Italy - 2019 - Photography: Simone Bossi
At the urban level, the reorganization of accesses and external areas opens the school spaces to the city. The new main entrance transforms the back of the building into a new façade and draws a large, accessible, threshold space. The program is organized to favour a continuous and controlled use of the building that, following the concept of community schools, integrates a large number of activities opened to the district community.
The project proposes an intervention that relates with the existing building, enhancing the architectural qualities and freeing the structure from former addictions. The topic of the new building envelope has been interpreted as an opportunity for innovating the entire school structure and as a tool for transmitting the pedagogical values of a school opened to the city.
An “inhabitated evelope” is proposed with new structures that allow to extend the educational and recreational activities in terraces and outdoor gardens and welcome new learning spaces.
The simplicity of building coating -plaster- is elaborated by alternating finishes with different granulometry, creating slight façade depths. The new design reinterprets the existing compositional element – the frame – and uses the color to create a neighborhood landmark.
On its interior, the classroom clusters sums up design topics common to all the interior of the school: the interrelationship between interior / exterior, furniture as a transformative element, greenery as an element that accompanies the students in everyday life and assume pedagogical value. The cluster common space is conceived as an internal / external system, of which the classrooms are the meeting point and the hinge. The new walk-in structures provide clusters with small outdoor terraces, spaces for the halls useful for recreation and complementary educational activities.
This approach to the project aims to make Fermi a case study for the innovation of school structures no longer in line with the new educational models. An approach that can be applied on buildings similar for morphology and technical-constructive characteristics, currently very widespread in Italy.










Casa con Dispositivo Domestico
Turin, Italy - 2016 - Photography: Beppe Giardino



