NOAH’S ARK
Completed after 5 years, nested in the historic park of Villa Paglia and at the forefront of spatial innovation and energy sustainability, the new Noah's Ark nursery school of Alzano Lombardo, designed by C+S Architects with the collaboration of local Studio Capitanio Architetti, is rooted in the territory but also in the history of Italian Design. Maria Alessandra Segantini: "This school is an innovative way to design spaces for education, an act of breaking down the walls which, through transparency and intervisibility, favors socialization and creativity for the children, their teachers, the families and the all the community around them."
On 7th January 2025, 125 children of Alzano Lombardo, near Bergamo, entered the new 'Noah's Ark' nursery school for the first time: a precious pavilion cladded in white glass mosaic and bronze windows, punctuated by a series of roof-sheds and immersed in the historic park of Villa Paglia. The budget for the intervention (5.5 million euro) was financed by the Lombardy Region, GSE, the Cariplo Foundation and the Municipality of Alzano Lombardo. The nursery school occupies 3,380 m2 of the Villa Paglia complex and its park both protected by the Heritage Department covering a total area of 15,865 m2.
The project was designed by Carlo Cappai and Maria Alessandra Segantini, C+S ARCHITECTS with offices in Treviso and London, in collaboration with Studio Capitanio based in Bergamo (site supervision, local coordination, health and safety and QS), and with the structural consultancy of the Myallonier Ingegneria srl, MEP engineering by the MCZ studio, acoustics by Andrea Breviario and geological consultancy by Castaldia.
Cappai and Segantini have been working on school buildings for more than thirty years. Their schools are internationally known, have been valued as best practices to write the new Italian Ministry’s guidelines on school building design and have been exhibited at the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale with the installation EDUcare in 2016.
Carlo Cappai and Maria Alessandra Segantini write: “As architects and researchers, we recognize that schools have an important political role - from the Greek polis, community – they are community buildings which build communities. We like to think of our schools as squares of small towns and villages. The Alzano Lombardo childhood center is an opportunity for us to translate part of the territory's heritage and transform it into a resource for the community. The transformation of the park of Villa Paglia is one of these legacies that is transformed into potential, at the urban scale, at the architectural scale and at the scale of the physical experience of citizens. We conceived this school building imagining the possibility of creating a space that could be used by the whole community, at different times and experienced by students, teachers and children as a large transparent and open cultural hub that stimulates curiosity and the exchange of experiences and knowledge among people, reconnecting them with nature and all its inhabitants."
The site where the new school is located has a surface area of 3,380 m2. Which once was the "vegetable garden" of Villa Paglia northern to the ornamental garden, from which it is separated to the west by a pergola made up of a double row of concrete grit columns. To the north and east it is bordered by high walls partly in stone and partly in concrete which separate it respectively from Via Montelungo and a private property. Altimetrically it is divided into several levels, with an average height difference of approximately 3.50 m, separated by a retaining wall made of river pebbles.
In continuity with the stone retaining walls that draw continuity between the different levels of the Val Seriana landscape, the project adopts the topographic rule of the construction of retaining walls - the DNA of the place - grafting onto the entrance from Via Montelungo a new wall in reinforced concrete pigmented red and deactivated with exposed aggregates to create continuity and harmony with the surrounding landscape. At the entrance, the wall becomes a space to house the meters, but also a texture with the metal fence that follows the bends of the road and a red gate with the logo of the new school. Upon arrival from Via Montelungo, only the roof sheds can be seen, a tribute to Alzano's glorious industrial past, which suggest the metaphor of the school as a 'factory of knowledge'. An industrial past that made Alzano Lombardo famous for the white concrete that still today it is called 'Alzano white': a color that the architects have chosen to define the identity of the new school, covered in white glass mosaic tiles. A detail that is also a tribute to the post-war Italian design masters.
The deactivated red concrete wall affects the landscape, turning into a play ramp that children will recognize as the identity of their school. A ramp, which becomes a bench or houses the heating pumps. A ramp where the animal figures of the famous puzzle that Enzo Mari designed for Danese in 1957 are engraved.
"On Sundays, on a table in front of the fireplace, my mom and grama scattered Enzo Mari's animals from the puzzle and my sister and I played at reconstructing it. I loved that game, I loved touching the wood, I loved seeing how all the pieces made up a whole where all the figures embraced each other... the warmth of that moment was kept somewhere in my memory to resurface when I started thinking about the Alzano school... I wanted every child to feel that warmth in my school... that idea of being together, that pleasure of playing while learning. For this reason, I proposed to the team to engrave those animals along the path that leads to the school, as if the school became a contemporary Noah's Ark that saves the world... and where everyone, animals, children, plants embrace each other."- explains Maria Alessandra Segantini speaking about the design concept.
During the journey on the ramp, the school begins to appear between its faults. At the level of the school entrance, the wall becomes a space: the hippopotamus houses the stroller and tricycle storage, the pig and the bull become the ventilation of the heating plant. The design concept stands on the threshold between architecture and landscape and is developed through the relationship and tension between the volume of the rough red wall with the engraved animal ramp and the precious transparent volume of the school cladded in white glass mosaic tiles and large windows framed by a thin bronze structure, which reflects the colorful life of the children playing and, at the same time, the landscape and the changing of the seasons of the centuries-old garden.
And here the white glass mosaic facades provide a precious contrast to the landscape of the colored wall: the two materials meet on the ground in a precise line: on one side the raw red concrete laid at the foot of the wall which changes color and becomes fine-grained Levocel at the foot of the white mosaic facade. The latter, built with 14 mm tiles variable in section, lights up with ever-changing shades at every moment of the day and evening, playing with the shadows and reflections of the lights and the landscape.
Despite developing on a single level, the school explodes in height inside thanks to a complex section that collects light not only from the large windows of the facade, but also from the shed roof, a reminder of the industrial vocation of the Bergamo area, the identity of this land which the project helps to consolidate in the experience of children, transforming itself into a future legacy.
The layout of the school is tripartite. Flexibility is the determining element of the layout. Although a name has been given to all the rooms, the central hall and the relationships with the lateral wings allow the spaces to be used in multiple ways and to invent special methods for teaching, pushing the teachers to express their creativity to the benefit of education: all spaces can easily be transformed into art laboratories, spaces for digital and theatrical activities, gyms, theater spaces. The same flexibility allows the use of the school by the community even beyond school hours, thanks to the presence of the large empty central hall which allows the greenery of the park to flow in all directions through the large windows.
The hall is a central distribution space but also a multifunctional space, a space of potential, of the invention of special events. Two internal courtyards excavate the building as 'special open-air rooms' allowing even the little ones to stay outdoors as much as possible without danger, being floored with a soft anti-shock carpet and populated by the same colorful animals by Enzo Mari. The central space explodes in height, punctuated by a sequence of shed skylights set at 240 cm which also bring light into the innermost areas of the school: an indirect, diffused light which counterbalances the brightness of the windows and courtyards.
From the entrance, the transparency of the courtyards allows a throughout view to the garden on the opposite side.
The choice of materials is delicate: it entrusts the points of contact between the children and the space to wood and promotes intervisibility among all spaces. Great attention was paid to the use of materials to ensure excellent acoustics in every space.
"We have designed a 'space of potential', where every space can be transformed by the creativity of the teachers or the community that revolves around it. All distribution spaces are generous and can be transformed into 'spaces for special activities' even during after-school hours. In this way the school becomes an epicenter for the community and strengthens its identity" - writes Carlo Cappai.
On the west side, the 6 sections of the school overlook the park of Villa Paglia with its centuries-old trees and the historic pergola, while towards the hall a glass door and a large window tell the story of the flow of life in each section. The white linoleum floor, laid over the entire surface of the school (including the toilets), is engraved in each classroom by an animal with a different color, the same color used for the shiny ceramic tiles of the corresponding bathroom of each section.
Each classroom is equipped with a fixed wardrobe that extends along the entire length of the section, while on the opposite side Mari's same animals, this time in plywood, become teaching equipment and large-scale games designed specifically by C+S Architects.
Each classroom has a direct exit towards the external portico, a tribute to Terragni's detail for the Sant'Elia nursery school in Como with a series of metal pillars on which external curtains are mounted that approach the facade without touching it. The external lighting of the school is also included on the system of detached pillars.
On the side opposite the classrooms, are located the gym, the infirmary, the teachers' rooms, the kitchen with separate entrance.
Opposite the entrance is the generous canteen space which opens onto the garden and the play areas, two large circles in colored anti-shock carpet on which the silhouettes of the animals are once again engraved.
The canteen space is also marked by the sequence of sheds with a warm and diffused light that contrasts with the light that, at sunset, enters from the large windows overlooking the garden.
Thanks to the use of alternative energies, the building reaches the highest levels of energy efficiency, representing the first public building classified NZEB (Nearly Zero Energy Building) for the community of Alzano Lombardo.
Carlo Cappai and Maria Alessandra Segantini conclude: "The experience of this project has given us the opportunity to get to know an area rich in ancient and recent memory and, thanks to the collaboration with Studio Capitanio and the constructor Perico, which have generously helped us to translate the needs of the community and the DNA of the place, and with whom we worked in great harmony, we feel we have planted another seed to grow a strong community through the design of a school building, giving back to the citizens of Alzano a part of the landscape which was closed off. We are honored to have worked with the Alzano community taking care of the precious historical, artistic and landscape resources and returning them to the citizens through the design of a school."
CREDITS
Client: Municipality of Alzano Lombardo
Head Designers and Design Guardianship: Carlo Cappai e Maria Alessandra Segantini, C+S ARCHITECTS,
PM: Maria Alessandra Segantini with Tommaso Iaiza, Stefano Di Daniel, C+S ARCHITECTS
Site Supervision, Health and Safety, QS and local relations: Remo Capitanio, with Alberto Valtulini and Marina Brambati, STUDIO CAPITANIO ARCHITETTI
Structures: Sergio Myallonier, Myallonier Ingegneria srl
MEP: Enrico Zambonelli, Loris Doneda, MCZ Ingegneria srl
Acoustics: Andrea Breviario
Geology, geotechnical consultancy: Giulio Mazzoleni, CASTALDIA
Photos: Alessandra Bello, Maria Alessandra Segantini
