The school. Element of urban regeneration (IT)

The school is, for us, the privileged scenario in which the individual can grow, educate critical thinking and experience an authentic rebirth to freedom. As architects, designing a building which plays such a crucial role for the Community life is a unique opportunity to regenerate the whole city.

The word "crisis", perhaps more than any other, describes the present historical context. The economic crisis has revealed a crisis that is actually much more complex and ancient, as it regards the society, and even deeper, the single man. The term "crisis" comes from the greek "krino", which was used in reference to the threshing, the concluding activity in the grain harvest, which consists in the separation of the wheat grain from the straw and chaff. So the meaning is screening, distinguishing what is valuable from what is secondary, judging. It is therefore a term anything but negative, which we believe has much to deal with the concept of education and school. School is the place of education, in which the curiosity and critical thinking should be continuously stressed. Educate, does not only mean to train competent, reliable and efficient individuals; first of all it means to develop critical thinking and to awake the innate and unfortunately often dormant ability to criticize, to ask the most sincere, tough and deep questions to itself and to the world. The project of a School for Culinary Arts & Hotel Management in the town of Alghero, Sardinia, is an opportunity for us to imagine a new vibrant center of the city, flexible to different uses, widely accessible as well as tailored to the needs of the local school community. The school is, for us, the privileged scenario in which the individual can grow, educate critical thinking and experience an authentic rebirth to freedom. As architects, designing a building which plays such a crucial role in the Community life is a unique opportunity to regenerate the whole city.