On Saturday 26 September, the new Cremonini Ongaro School Complex in Villa Ferro, Fidenza, officially opened its doors to the town: 19 classrooms, laboratories, two open-plan libraries, a sports hall and a 34,000-square-metre park for over 400 children. The project was developed as part of the ‘Futura — La Scuola per l’Italia di Domani’ (Futura — The School for Tomorrow’s Italy) call for proposals under the PNRR Education programme, and was completed in accordance with the timetable set out in the funding agreement.
The architectural design bears the signature of Vittorio Grassi Architects, who have created a bright building that opens out onto the park, breaking down the boundaries between inside and outside and placing the relationship between pupils and their surroundings at the heart of the design. “When I design a school, I try to do so through the eyes of a child,” says architect Vittorio Grassi, “and I ask myself: if I were a child again, which school would I want to attend?”
Incide Engineering was responsible for giving this vision its structural framework and the most efficient building systems, overseeing the structural and services design using BIM, as well as construction management, fire safety and security for the entire project.
There are two key technical choices that look to the future:
Sustainability: the rooftop photovoltaic system fully covers the building’s energy requirements, which achieves energy class A4 — the highest possible — and the NZEB-20% (Nearly Zero Energy Building) classification.
Modularity: the prefabricated structure is based on a 7.5 x 7.5 m basic module, a flexible layout designed to accommodate extensions and alterations in the years to come — a school designed to grow alongside those who will use it.
The entire project was coordinated via a single BIM platform, which enabled the engineering and architectural teams to collaborate and align their work throughout the project’s development.
Incide is proud to have completed a school that lives up to the role it is meant to play. “It would be right for all our children to grow up and be educated in environments such as this: we cannot secure a future for our society – the cradle of world culture – unless we devote attention and resources to these issues,” comments Gianluca Vallerini, Founder of Incide.
