Traditional schools believe that teacher-led lessons with children seated facing the expert standing at the front of the class are a powerful tool for the learning environment. We don’t.

We believe the learning environment should be fluid and diverse, inclusive and collaborative, based on an innovative approach to pedagogy where the learner is at the center of the learning journey and the design.

HOW DOES IT FEEL THE SCHOOL OF TOMORROW?

The vision for the CLIP–Oporto International School is to become an exemplary center of teaching and learning that nurtures and develops open-minded and creative individuals who are empowered to achieve their full potential through innovation, international mindedness, academic excellence, and resilience.

The school itself has an ambition of inspiring a lasting and intergenerational culture of learning, teaching students to ‘learn how’ rather than just to ‘know what’, helping students develop the initiative, enterprise, and creativity to become lifelong learners, connecting students and the community to create learning programs rooted in the real world, enabling students to take responsibility for their learning, treating democracy, citizenship, and governance as fundamental aspects of learning, giving primary students the autonomy to learn on their terms, customizing learning, and reconfiguring teacher-student relationships through the use of computer technology.

Based on these pedagogical principles of a high-quality learning environment that contributes towards students’ lifelong well-being, MASSLAB was challenged to design an extension of the existing school, thus completely autonomous. The new building wishes to accommodate younger kids from 0 to 9/10 years old, leaving the existing building for older classes.

A new approach for enduring growth means that the first step is to find a design approach that can meet the needs while also being adaptable in the long term. Based on this approach, we identified the CLIP School of Tomorrow guidelines:

• Enduring identity in construction materials

• Strong connection between the building and nature

• Create a safe, flexible, fluid, and inspiring learning environment

• Generate spaces that highlight inclusiveness and collaborative partnerships among students, parents, and staff

With a sensitive adaptation to the landscape, the kindergarten areas were placed looking into nature, allowing a strong connection between the building and the surroundings. The biggest strength of the project is to allow the natural environment to get inside the building, with the creation of views to the outside, and also the creation of interior patios that make a controlled natural learning environment.

An organic kindergarten shape embraces the children and the landscape. Also, the building itself is merged into nature, becoming part of it. The school areas and classrooms are developed with the flexibility, playfulness, and personality necessary to become a natural incubator for a better learning environment.

The new extension building is designed to be more enduring, more resilient, more welcoming, and well-integrated with its surroundings. The informal free spaces (classrooms and multipurpose rooms) allow spontaneous appropriation by the users, letting different events happen and playing a fundamental role in the children’s structure.

Different activities can take place in these areas, divided by light partitions, furniture, and curtains, given their flexible character, without compromising differentiated areas for learning and playing. By connecting the lowest and the highest points of the plot, this project seeks to achieve the capacity of being a merging platform, allowing the opportunity to split the interior program into two big spaces.