Music Conservatory and Secondary School at Quinta das Flores

The music and secondary school complex is located in an area of recent expansion of Coimbra, having a neighbourhood that is environmentally not very pleasant or cultured & a strange and odd occurrence in a city of strong academic tradition. The site where both schools are located is too urbanely exposed, unprotected and placed next to a road punctuated by ugly apartment blocks, supermarkets and other structures that, together, qualify or characterize these weak-places.

The envisaged program for the music conservatory and secondary school is naturally complex, very demanding in the environmental quality of the different spaces of tuition and their relationship with their surroundings. The program requires that the proposal interacts with both institutions in a way to convey a clear and strong institutional image that is utilitarian and jovial yet not fashionable, able to provide the tools for urban regeneration. A country of limited resources requires structures with flexible usage applied within clear principles of sustainability and a strong sense of permanence in contrast with the sense of the ephemeral. On the northern limit of the site, initially occupied by the secondary school, a long floating body stands on a series of pillars marking a functional rhythm.

To its south and on the lower levels, the complementary parts of the program for common use of both schools forming recreational patios. It is rewarding to sense students and tutors rehearsing all over, even in the unglamorous basement amid the unbearable machines and ducts. The existing school patrimony has been recuperated and adjusted to the new requirements with the use of generally current and locally available materials but with a series of environmental comfort laws resulting in absolute constructive discomfort with the whole being an involuntary monument to the particular agenda of the legislator. site 39500m2 gross area 25874m2