Schools

For over three decades, C+S Architects has imagined schools as the piazzas of small towns and villages: civic spaces, open beyond school hours, where education and community life meet. This vision, which helped rewrite the policies schools are designed in Italy, belongs to a broader idea the practice calls Future Heritage — an architecture where memory, ecology, and public life are held together and carried forward, with the school planted as a civic seed from which community can grow.

Location Analysis — The Dasha River Ecological Corridor flows along the western side of the site and empties into the sea, using water as a link to connect various educational and urban public facilities. Leveraging the improvement of the Dasha River, Pingshan School has become a significant spatial node at the northern end of the Dasha River.

School at Belgaon Dhaga begins by moving beyond the rigid functions of the original building, using the new addition to foster spontaneous activity and unscripted interaction. The intent is to create informal learning environments that offer freedom and encourage a better exchange of knowledge between everyone inhabiting the space. Through this approach, the extension becomes a tool to bridge the gap between formal use and informal discovery, turning the in between zones into meaningful places of engagement.

Founded in 2018 by Charles Hesters and Pierre Martin-Saint-Etienne, HEMAA is an architecture firm that embraces a contextual, sobriety-based approach rooted in the living world. Each project emerges from a careful reading of its surroundings, seeking a balance between nature, use, and material. In Evry-Courcouronnes (Greater Paris – France), the Parc des Loges Childhood and Sports Center fully embodies this philosophy: a gentle, landscape-based composition built from bio- and geo-sourced materials, serving a public facility that is open, generous, and sustainable.

French architecture studio Coldefy, in collaboration with Relief Architecture, has completed the 650-pupil Robert Badinter Secondary School, the first timber-framed school in northern France. The school is located on a former railyard site, adjacent to the city’s train station and a ten-minute walk from the town centre. The design and location of the new school is part of an urban renewal project that seeks to create a consolidated public transportation hub complemented by lively civic amenities. Located on the site of the city’s Vauban fortifications moat, the site also contained catiches – subterranean chalk quarries – which had to be filled in to stabilise the ground prior to construction.

Atelier van Berlo and Ector Hoogstad Architecten designed Het Streek Lyceum in Ede. The new building redefines the secondary school as a social and spatial heart for both students and the wider community. Designed by Atelier van Berlo and Ector Hoogstad Architecten, the building fosters encounters, vitality, and a sense of belonging within a compact and circular design.

Located in Tra Mai commune, Nam Tra My district, Quang Nam province – a remote mountainous area in Central Vietnam – Nuoc Ui School serves an ethnic minority community scattered across challenging terrain and harsh weather conditions, with storms and heavy rains occurring almost every year. The project is primarily funded by the Midas Foundation, with doors and windows sponsored by Tostem, and designed by Vo Trong Nghia Architects. Its goal is to provide a sustainable, friendly, and locally adapted learning environment.