DASOUPOLI HIGH SCHOOL 2010 -

The new (open) school: The new school reflects changes in social conditions and educational standards and is perceived as the hub between dwelling, workplace and leisure place and the wider community, in which it integrates and serves. Under a single roof, the creation of a flexible space of activities, individual and group, teaching, educational and social, is proposed.
The horizontal school: The horizontal development of the complex serves an organizational system in which spatial distribution, access and construction merge effortlessly. The composition is characterized by a combination of larger, single volumes of public programmes that exceed in height a 'carpet' of single-storey teaching rows.
Particular emphasis was given to the design of both classrooms and their intermediate zones -patios and linear courtyards- associated with them. The schoolyard is located in the centre of the scheme with an opening to the outdoor space and the sports fields, and is surrounded by the gallery and other public programmes. The gradations, from open to shaded to closed, allow for flexible spatial appropriations under different weather conditions.
The school as a city. Paths and places: ‘A school should be like a city,’ according to Hertzberger. The building is defined both by its main axis of circulation -the ‘highway’- the transversal corridors -the secondary ‘streets’- and by the forecourt -the square-. The existing multipurpose hall merges and becomes an integral part of the public core of the school. Openings in its new elevation enhance communication and provide additional space for more tiers.
The school of the future: The school of the future is here, open, transparent, flexible. The central public axis is perceived as an open hall for information, learning, a market of searching, discoveries and actions. Emphasis was given to the multi-functional significance of intermediate spaces, meeting spaces and alternative use spaces, and to the multidimensional space of the classroom, through different possibilities for the organization and provision for future changes with an economic and efficient displacement of partition walls.
The mediterranean school: The credo of the modern movement, ‘light, air and sun’ is transformed into a concrete structure, in which the proposed hybrid type of a canopy building with extensive semi-open spaces, courtyard and patios, responds to the specific characteristics of the Mediterranean climate and of programme.
The structure is a thin and lightweight composite structure with a limited number of shear-walls. In the case of public programmes, metal beams allow for larger widths and cantilevers.