The project aims to give new centrality to the Don Bosco neighbourhood becoming a new territorial stronghold capable of promoting integration, vitality and inclusion. A project that inserts new functions in the neighbourhood, at the same time upgrading the existing and preserving the public character of the “unbuilt”. The lot is transformed into a place capable of establishing a dialogue with the various communities that populate the neighbourhood, and of putting them in contact with each other by promoting mutual knowledge and respect, resulting in a safer urban space, capable of combating the current criticality and marginality that characterise the neighbourhood. The school as an institution is thus conceived to be a catalyst, an urban centrality, proposing a use of the lot in various time slots, even and especially beyond school hours, so as to attract interest in the population and stimulate processes of integration and social cohesion as well as training.
Following the guidelines of the “school without a backpack” method, the new school buildings focus on the organisation of the educational environment, based on the assumption that both the pedagogical-didactic model and the relational model underlying the community itself depend on the functioning of the educational buildings. In this sense, school buildings function on two overlapping layers: a material one, characterised by the architecture itself, teaching tools, furniture and technologies; and an immaterial one, characterised by relational aspects, contact possibilities, regulatory aspects and evaluation systems.