A School in the Forest - Fatura

DRW

Competition

THESSALONIKI, GREECE

A School in the Forest

National Concept Design Architectural Competition for the design of an elementary school with gymnasium, Municipality of Neapoli, Agios Pavlos/Sykies, Thessaloniki, Greece.
(COMMENDATION)

The building complex consists of two distinct programmatic units, comprising the spaces of the elementary school and of the municipal sports hall. Rather than their explicit contrast, the systematic reciprocity of the above programmatic units constituted an essential design decision. The placement of the central courtyard on top of the sports hall achieved the formulation of a big, open space for the school recess and play. Along these lines, the composition acquired a constituent hub, while the overall open spaces of the school complex are not dissolved into smaller units. At the same time, the two programmatic units merge into one single entity in the two levels of the sports hall, allowing for the uninterrupted circulation of students, visitors, and athletes through a sequence of indoor spaces that cross all the spaces of the building.

The split of the complex into two volumes – L and U shapes – permits the separation of the extended programmatic demands into the very limited surface of the given plot. This split and the consequent rotation of the two shapes achieves their arrangement according to the optimal orientation, while at the same time creates an opening towards the city. This double operation (split/rotation) allows for a choreographed array of plateaus, openings, and passages as “diaphragms” that formulate and filter movements along the open spaces of the school, and its potential linking with the adjacent open-air theatre. This passage widens in its midpoint, located in the centre of the U-shaped volume, and leads to the large, sheltered platform/balcony of the elementary school, which frames the view to the city of Thessaloniki.

Team

Theodossis Issaias

Platon Issaias

Giannantonis Moutsatsos

Alexandra Vougia

Collaborators

Giorgos Gougas and Partners / Budget and Development Consultants

Ilias Matsas / Mechanical Engineer

Alkimos Papathanasiou / Civil Engineer

Categories

Architecture, Collective Equipment, Education, Energy, Housing, Infrastructure, Provision, Sustainability

About

Fatura Collaborative – Research & Design Practice, was founded in 2009 and is developing projects across a wide range of scales, from intimate objects and performance, to architecture, urban design and planning. We are interested in architecture as social infrastructure, in developing collective equipments, in the design of spaces of care, empathy and welfare. We design and research expanding new problematics about ecology, the domestic, everyday life and the city.

Members

ELISAVET HASA
ARCHITECT

is an architect, researcher and educator based in London. She holds a diploma in architecture from the School of Architecture of the University of Patras, Greece (2015) and was awarded a PhD from the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art (2022). Her thesis dealt with the materiality of grassroots, ad hoc and mutual aid projects by social movements in Europe and the United States, with an emphasis on their relationship with the state. She is teaching in undergraduate architectural design studios and history and theory courses at the London South Bank University and Central Saint Martins. She is also a registered architect in the UK (ARB) and Greece (TCG) and has practiced architecture in London, Madrid and Athens.

PLATON ISSAIAS
ARCHITECT

is an architect, researcher, and educator. He studied architecture in Thessaloniki, Greece, and holds an MSc from Columbia University and a PhD from TU Delft and The City as a Project research collective. He is Assistant Professor of Architectural Design at the School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He is the co-Head of Projective Cities MPhil programme at the Architectural Association, where he is also teaching Diploma Unit 7 with Georgia Hablützel and Hamed Khosravi. His research interests explore urban design and architecture in relation to the politics of labour, economy, law and labour struggles. He has written and lectured extensively about Greek urbanisation and the politics of urban development.

THEODOSSIS ISSAIAS
ARCHITECT

(he/him) is an architect and educator. He serves as Curator, Heinz Architectural Center, at Carnegie
Museum of Art and Special Faculty at Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture. He studied
architecture in Athens, Greece, and holds a Master of Science in Architecture and Urbanism from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research focuses on architecture at the intersection of
human rights, conflict, and the provision of shelter. This interest led to his PhD dissertation
“Architectures of the Humanitarian Front” (2021, Yale University), which examined a period
around WWI when conflict, displacement, and territorial insecurity provoked the reconfiguration
of humanitarian operations –their spatial organization and ethical imperatives.

GIANNANTONIS MOUTSATSOS
ARCHITECT

is an architect based in Lund, Sweden. He graduated in 2010 from the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens and holds an MSc in Energy Efficient and Environmental Building Design from the School of Architecture of Lund University (2015). He has practiced architecture as a freelance architect in Greece and currently in Sweden (eg. Tengbom architects), where he works on a wide range of projects including small houses, larger residential complexes as well as care, educational and industrial facilities.

ALEXANDRA VOUGIA
ARCHITECT

is an architect and an educator. She graduated in 2007 from the School of Architecture of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She holds the MSc in Advanced Architectural Design from GSAPP, Columbia University (2008) and a PhD from the Architectural Association – School of Architecture, London (2016). She is currently an Assistant Professor of History and Theory of Architecture at the School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She has previously taught at the Architectural Association and the University of Westminster and practiced as an architect in New York and Athens.

MYRTO VRAVOSINOU
ARCHITECT

is an architect based in Thessaloniki. She graduated from the School of Architecture of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2015 and holds an MSc in Environmental Architectural and Urban Design from the same institution (2023). Since 2017, she has been collaborating with a group of freelance engineers, working on a variety of residential, workspace, and small-scale digital fabrication projects. Her special interests lie in urban and architectural design practices that promote spatial justice.