Architecture Competition Caslino

As the Swiss School of Milan intends to construct a new school building in Caslino near Como, Barbara Fässler decided to extend the Architects’ Competition to all pupils from year 6 to year 12. The first step was a critical session about the existing building in which all the students were invited to express their opinion on different aspects of the actual state and then to develop through brainstorming what they wish to change and how the school could become more livable and learning more efficient through other proportions, spaces, light distribution or materials. After this preparation period the pupils were given the task of developing their own architectural proposition for the school in Caslino.

The students received the same informations as the architects, in slightly simplified form. They received the map of the terrain, where the school should be built and all the criteria, which had been communicated in the “real” competition. The students had to start with a check-list, then write an accurate description of their ideas and finally elaborate three master drawings from their first sketches and in the end build a three dimensional model.

The aim of this competition was to create a collection of ideas from those directly involved in the school’s everyday life, namely the children and the adolescents, who are rarely considered by school architects or education authorities, in a school development process.

The results were more than satisfying, from different points of view as school matter (new content ideas) or formal aspects (form, materials, proportions). The articulated project took about two months of work, having two lessons a week to work on it.

Barbara Fässler has been invited by Ludovica Moro and Felix Wettstein to present the Architecture Competition Caslino in a lecture to the Faculty of Architecture at HSLU University Lucerne (see the Pdf of the lecture to download on your left).