Braamcamp Freire Secondary School

Originally built with five pre-fabricated pavilions — one central, with a single floor, and four with two floors each —, back in 1986, the school underwent a major intervention, in 2012. The project’s objective was to reorganize the school campus, starting with the articulation of its different functions, in order to guarantee integrated operation, while also promoting its openness to the outside community. The project consisted in the reorganization of the existing pavilions into a single new building with interior circulation. The public circulation areas promote informal learning and are integrated in a continuous route that encompasses the two floors of the building and various spaces that articulate the various functional areas of the school. In this area, there is an encouragement of informal studying and the proximity between the student, the various educational programmes and the whole school community. Everything is organized around a central square that connects with the remaining leisure areas, integrating in the territory’s topography and the landscape.