The Vittoria Junior International School in Turin is an educational space before it is a building. Between 2017 and 2019 Base Engineering delivered its refurbishment, working on architecture, concept and interior design as a single operation: rethinking school environments around the people who inhabit them every day, children and young people. The signature of the project is colour, used not as decoration but as language. Colour that gives spaces character, makes them recognisable, helps younger children orient themselves and read the building like an intuitive map. Wonder, surprise, curiosity: the three reactions an educational environment should be able to spark become the design criterion. Library, canteen, gym, classrooms and corridors are treated as a continuous system of experiences, where every threshold communicates a function and every passage invites exploration. A project of contained scale but high precision, in which interior design does pedagogical work and architecture places itself at the service of growth.
Project Axonometric
The Project
Overview
The intervention concerns the architectural requalification of the Istituto Madre Cabrini in Turin, transformed into the new home of the Junior section of the Vittoria International School. The project involved both the interior spaces and the outdoor areas, with the aim of creating a contemporary educational environment, capable of combining the quality of the existing architecture with the demands of international teaching. The building, already intended for school activities, was completely rethought to host the Nursery, Cambridge Primary and Cambridge Lower Secondary programmes, through the creation of flexible, welcoming environments designed around the needs of students. Particular attention was devoted to the common spaces - library, canteen, play areas, gym and environments for informal learning - conceived as places of encounter, growth and socialization, where architecture becomes an integral part of the educational experience.
The Challenge
The main design challenge was to transform an existing building into a modern international school, preserving its architectural identity and enhancing its constructive features. We favoured the recovery of the original structures, letting them emerge as distinctive elements of the spaces and integrating them with new materials, colours and contemporary solutions: the aim was not to replace the existing, but to reinterpret it. The project also confronted the protection constraints present on part of the school complex - which required constant dialogue with the competent authorities - and a particularly defined schedule, to guarantee the school's full operability in time for the start of the school year.
Pre-Development & Governance
The preliminary phase was characterized by an in-depth analysis of the spaces and of the ways in which the school environments are used, with the aim of building an educational model in which the spaces themselves contribute to the learning process. In parallel, we developed the interventions needed to bring the building into regulatory compliance with its new use, integrating the school's functional requirements with respect for the existing architectural features - including the removal of the accretions accumulated over time and the recovery of the deteriorated original elements.
Systems & Technical Coordination
We coordinated the entire development of the requalification through an integrated process of design, multidisciplinary coordination and management of the execution phases. The organization of the spaces was guided by a design oriented towards the wellbeing of students, in which colour takes on a functional as well as an aesthetic role: the different tones are used as tools of orientation and recognizability, defining intuitive paths and environments that are easily legible even by the youngest children. The refunctionalization of the interiors integrated new teaching spaces while retaining, where possible, the architectural elements of greatest historic value, with a multidisciplinary team of architects and engineers capable of addressing architectural, structural and systems aspects in an integrated way.
Process Management
We took on the role of lead in the management of the intervention, coordinating all design activities and ensuring constant dialogue between the client, specialist consultants and the authorities involved in the authorization process. For the interventions on the portions of the building subject to protection, coordination took place in close collaboration with the Soprintendenza, guaranteeing respect for the historic-architectural values of the complex. The intervention, begun in 2017, was developed with integrated process management and particular attention to the timescales needed for the opening of the new school premises.
Value Added
The project gives the Vittoria International School a contemporary, functional home perfectly integrated with its international educational model: about 650 sqm of spaces designed to accompany students throughout their educational journey, from Nursery to Cambridge Lower Secondary. For students and school staff, a child-scaled environment where architecture, light, colour and the organization of spaces foster curiosity, learning, inclusion and everyday wellbeing. For the territory, the enhancement of a historic building of the city through a recovery respectful of its identity. For us, the consolidation of experience in the requalification of educational buildings: heritage protection, educational design and multidisciplinary coordination within a single intervention.
