LA CASA DELLE FERULE

Type: National Design Competition
Award: First Prize
Year: 2021
Development of project phases: Preliminary, Detailed, and Construction Design.
Years: 2022-2025
Specialized professionals involved in the project: Arch. F. Farella; Ing. M. Cappiello; Ing. P. Berloco
Images: InternoEsterno, Palermo – Italy
Physical Model: Atelier PCA
Site: Altamura (BA), Italy
Client: Comune di Altamura (BA), Italy
Construction cost: 8.450.000 €

Located in Lama di Cervo, in the newly developed neighborhood called Trentacapilli, southwest of the SS 96 — the road that divides the city of Altamura (BA) in two — stands La Casa delle Ferule, the proposal for the new kindergarten and primary school.

The surrounding urban context is characterized by houses mostly built in the last twenty years, arranged in a rather loose urban fabric and located on the edge of the typical rural landscape of the Alta Murgia Park. We are at the city’s edge, where concrete blocks, asphalt, terraced houses, and “pop-modern” villas come to an end, and where almond trees, ferules, terebinths, olive groves, Mediterranean figs, and Linum tommasinii begin to grow; where the Endemico delle Fate whitens amid the green.

Along Via Lama di Cervo, and further down toward Via Pietro Colletta, we already find corrugated layers of calcarenite emerging from the fields, half-risen from the earth as if they had always been there — dry stone walls, and, further on, cascine, masserie, and jazzi.

The intervention site, covering a total area of about 5,250 sqm, is classified in the municipal plan (P.R.G.) as a “C2 expansion area.” The neighborhood’s residents are mainly young families with school- and preschool-aged children, who are currently forced to travel by car to reach the nearest schools due to multiple issues — the most significant being the danger posed by crossing the SS 96 and the lack of infrastructure for slow mobility.

The neighborhood also suffers from a shortage of public green spaces — about 7 sqm per inhabitant less than the required amount — despite being close to the countryside and even though the P.R.G. establishes a standard of 9 sqm per inhabitant. Fortunately, the Integrated Sustainable Urban Development Strategy (SISUS) already provides for improvements to this condition, yet these measures still appear insufficient, especially if we consider this as a place where children will grow up and learn to understand themselves through their own territory and contact with nature.

At present, the study area lies slightly below road level (Min. 1.30 m / Max. 2.50 m) and is served by two main axes — Via Caduti delle Foibe and Via Giovanni Gentile — each about 9 meters wide and with two-way traffic. The lot’s alignment, SOUTH / SOUTH-EAST, is optimal for issues related to the orientation of the school spaces and their natural lighting.

The height difference described above guided the design toward extending the street level into the plot, creating a new urban square adjacent to the main school entrance and oriented toward the park. This space serves not only as a parking area but also as a public square for the neighborhood — a place for concerts, markets, open-air cinemas, or other collective activities.

On the “artificial plane” of this new square stand the quadrangular volumes housing the nursery and the sezione primavera, flanked by those of the administration offices. On the lower floor, accessed through the large communal Agorà (library/auditorium) — illuminated from above through a double-height space — are the kindergarten sections, along with the canteen, kitchen, gym, and a small swimming pool.

Particular attention was devoted to the design of the open spaces, not only regarding the square at the building’s entrance but especially the green areas. Every plant species included in the project is native to the site and integrated into the area called Bosco della Murgia, directly connected to the classroom wings to ensure a continuous indoor–outdoor relationship.

It is here that the great Mediterranean fig tree finds its place, bearing fruit and casting its broad shade for outdoor storytelling. Here, in the small botanical garden, children learn that caring for the earth brings wonderful fruits. Here, the almond tree beside the small outdoor theater heralds the arrival of spring. Here, the terebinth colors the sky red, echoing the poppies in the meadow. Here, ferules sprout alongside asphodels, silver sage, thyme, spiny euphorbia, and sea squill.

In every possible way, the project seeks the landscape — aiming to integrate it, absorb it, to rediscover the core identity of this territory, to return it to the children, to return it to the future.

Construction Technology

Beginning in the modern era — and more precisely in the 16th century — builders of military and hydraulic works, especially in Italy, began to employ large-scale construction systems used to retain the ground, based initially on stacked wicker baskets and later on metal mesh containers. This practice, particularly effective, easy, and quick to execute, rapidly spread under the name of the gabion system.

The resulting element is extremely robust, with good resistance to static loads and moderate resistance to bending. It allows numerous variations in dimension, color, and material and, when stacked, forms self-supporting gravity structures. Gabion blocks are a highly modular technology — more rigid and easier to move than traditional ones — and are suitable for constructing both infill and self-supporting walls up to 7 meters high.

The material expressiveness of a wall made of gabions recalls that of irregular dry stone masonry, perceived through a metallic filigree and marked by subtle discontinuities between modules. It is easy to see how this contemporary reinterpretation of wall-making — with its irregular, expressive surfaces of light and shadow, mass and void, recess and projection — can be seen as an analogy to the rural architectural tradition of the Alta Murgia Park (a UNESCO Heritage landscape defined by dry stone walls) and can be reintroduced in the design of the new Polo per l’Infanzia of Altamura.

Beyond these formal and sensorial aspects — which open the way to further developments in current building culture — the use of gabions also presents a series of technical and performance advantages aligned with key principles of contemporary architecture: their production and installation have a very low energy footprint; they are environmentally friendly; and thanks to their unique ability to combine drainage capacity with modest water retention, they can host spontaneous or induced plant biocenoses.

Gabions are permeable to air (making them well suited to ventilated façade systems) and possess high thermal inertia; they are inexpensive, easy to transport, durable, maintenance-free, modular, demountable, and reusable. Even their filling can be made from recycled materials.

As emerges from this brief description, every design choice is not only supported by essential economic and managerial parameters but is also deeply connected to a focus on the use of local materials — easily available on site and carrying the expressive potential of the landscape to which they belong.

The building’s façades express the main structure — a metal frame with IPE profiles — making it legible through the succession of infill walls made of gabions filled with local stone. The interior, on the other hand, forms a space entirely made of wood, satisfying a dual purpose: first, to retain heat efficiently and minimize thermal dispersion, and second, to meet safety, comfort, and psycho-perceptive needs essential for the well-being of children — the kind of atmosphere that an innovative childhood center today should aspire to provide.

Pedagogy

In her book Self-Education, Maria Montessori recounts that, when asked how sociability could develop among children if they worked alone, she replied that traditional schools were places of regimentation “where all children do everything at the same time, even going to the toilet.” She continued, stating that “the society of children is made upside down compared to the common one: here sociability involves free and fair relations of courtesy and mutual help, although everyone minds his own business; there, on the other hand, sociability involves the commonality of postures of the body and the performance of uniform collective acts, but with the abolition of any pleasant or courteous relationship. Mutual help then, which in the other society is a virtue, here is the greatest crime, the worst form of indiscipline.”

The traditional school model risks reinforcing an individualistic paradigm, clearly expressed in its spatial organization — rows of single desks facing a teacher’s desk, where the educator speaks and requires all students to perform the same tasks, at the same time, in the same way. It is a mechanical process that treats everyone as identical and leaves little room for freedom. The appearance is one of collaboration, yet the work is strictly individual, ultimately denying any real connection with classmates.

For Maria Montessori, however, collaboration does not mean doing the same thing, nor does it necessarily imply group work. In the adult world, collaboration arises when a team is formed to solve a problem and each member contributes through a specific role — different activities that value individual skills, coming together to form a product greater than the sum of its parts.

Montessori also emphasized the importance of mutual aid, especially between older and younger children: “Our schools have shown that children of different ages help each other; the little ones see what the older ones do and ask for explanations, which they gladly give.” This approach recognizes that proximity in age can often better support learning and foster a climate of personal and collective growth. She writes: “It is a true teaching, since the mindset of the five-year-old child is so close to that of the three-year-old that the little one easily understands from him what we would not be able to explain ourselves.”

But the foundation for all this is space.

To make it possible, careful planning is required — adopting a flexible, modular approach that integrates movable furniture, desks, and chairs that can be easily reconfigured for any activity. In La Casa delle Ferule, the principle of spatial modularity allows each classroom to expand into two or three units through movable panels (which can also hold drawings, calendars, or signs), encouraging relationships among children and fostering creative dynamics in larger group activities.

The project for the new Childhood Center thus embraces the principles of contemporary pedagogy and prepares the space to accommodate inclusive dynamics — starting above all with the involvement of families, relatives, local artisans, and artists.

The aim is to create opportunities that allow the child to experience the world — to confront its hardness and mystery — while nurturing curiosity and wonder for the things that populate it, stimulating creativity through the act of making.

“Is it worth it for a child to learn by crying what he can learn by laughing?”
— Gianni Rodari