Transforming school space

In recent years, financial journalists have been using the controversial acronym PIIGS, a label that plays on its farmyard implication to describe those European countries—Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain—currently in the worst financial shape. As far as Portugal is concerned, however, its capacity to continue to produce progressive public architecture continues to distinguish it even amid its economic struggle.

Architecture has long been embedded in Portuguese civil society, and successful projects are known to have a positive influence on politics. One example is the program launched in 2007 by the then-Minister of Education Maria de Lurdes Reis Rodrigues—Parque Escolar EPE: a program for the rehabilitation of the country's secondary schools, which were built mostly in the 1970s. In its return to democracy in 1974, after the Carnation Revolution and independence of the colonies overseas, the new government decided that one of the starting points for re-establishing civil society was education, and instituted compulsory secondary education at a crucial moment when thousands of people fleeing from former colonial possessions.

The EPE program provides for the renovation of more than 300 secondary schools, with the creation of various facilities (libraries, computer rooms, technical laboratories, etc.) to help teaching practice keep pace with contemporary needs, at the same time transforming the school into a more social space—a key function for a contemporary multicultural Portuguese society. An array of high-profile architects such as Ricardo Bak Gordon, Gonçalo Byrne, Prata and Carlos Manuel Fernandes de Sá, among others, are participating in this program.

The Garcia de Orta Middle School in Porto is one such project. Ricardo Bak Gordon addressed a complex made up of pavilions in precast concrete by installing a new building on a long axis in a space between the gym and the central core. Divided into three blocks, it houses such functions as a new library, bar, auditorium, laboratories and a foyer.

Bak Gordon is given to strong gestures, even in buildings that must meet very specific functions. In this case, the central block is converted to a large covered square, a column-free space whose roof is supported by a closely spaced sequence of concrete beams. It reveals lessons imparted by the Brazilian João Vilanova Artigas, a master in poetically interpreting the strength of reinforced concrete.

At the same time, infused the project with intense color. In contrast to the strictly white and gray elevations, Ricardo Bak Gordon lit up the school interior in a deep red tone, giving a sumptuous appearance to modest materials. In this way, he paid another debt to modernist Brazilian architecture. The color red, shining in the Porto night, makes a reverential allusion to Oscar Niemeyer's Ibarapuera park auditorium in São Paulo.
Laura Bossi