The Noah’s Ark Nursery School, Alzano Lombardo

This school would very much like to be a “Noah’s Ark”, (if only a small vessel), not on account of the mythological flood, but because of what threatens us today.

The “Noah’s Ark” nursery school built at Alzano Lombardo, a town near Bergamo, is one of the latest endeavours of Cappai and Segantini’s architectural firm as regards public buildings for education, a theme they have been tackling for several years.

Historically, the school has been one of the preferential themes of architectural research in Europe: in Italy an important opportunity has recently been afforded by a large number of schools built thanks to National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRP) backed by European funds. Given this situation, it is legitimate and also necessary to raise the issue of revising the outdated ministerial guidelines for school design: and in fact the research conducted by the C+S firm is noteworthy for having also contributed to a modification of these guidelines, since their production with its rejection of a conjectural stylistic code testifies to research that is open, non-dogmatic, and attentive to individual circumstances.

The school at Alzano affirms a possible balance between the transmissibility of modes as a value, (typological and distributive clarity, formal simplification, a natural tendency to reproducibility inherent to any acceptable project) with a declared deviation, here represented by the large descending ramp which leads to the level of the school entrance. Colourful, and with its own geometry, it contrasts but never comes into direct contact with the building’s stereometric shape, which can best be described as a rectangular prism measuring 44 x 32.5 metres, and around 4.5m in height.

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