Caneças High School | ARX Portugal Arquitectos

The existent school is located in the outskirts of Caneças, Odivelas, in a territory of intense discontinuities. The proposal is structured beginning in a double interpretation of the learning concept: formal learning and informal learning. Those two types are translated in the building in two different architectural approaches, maintaining a dialogue between them. In consequence, the stiffness of the existent blocks, where the class rooms are placed, are structured like “learning machines”, in contrast with the informality of the new parts, enabling the “informal learning “in the collective spaces. Considering that in the school, every spaces are teaching spaces, that each one as its own importance, the organization and articulation between spaces is meant to fluid, with physical and visual permeability, allowing a more spontaneous and creative appropriation, leading to the willing of learn through space. The human relations and activities are, in the end, in the base of all knowledge. From a tectonic point of view, the solutions adopted give the building an idea of matter unity and grant the space an elementary and abstract character.