Seen from a distance, from the historic centre, and the sequence of approach to the built set of the old Leões factory allows one to understand that, oddly enough, its great value consists of its excessive volume that is imposed abruptly over the plain surroundings. One would say in an almost unexpected and unusual topography, an accident in the relief of the elongated, distended, landscape of the Alentejo.

The proposed occupation of this huge space with a school program oversees, in itself, a radical transformation of values. Machines are dismantled. People are introduced. The operating system that led to a vertical factory now obliges one to think in a school organized vertically.

It is proposed to return to the existing structure the stark and essential character that defines the plant, subtracting partition walls and ornaments added over the course of time. Retaking its original simplicity as intrinsic value of the structure.

Subtraction that we understand as design process, as construction of space. From the dismantlings result elements marked by the history of the place, which we propose to reuse in the construction of the school.

With the increasing knowledge of old industrial spaces and systems we found some of the strategies to reuse in the construction of the school.

A large shed surrounds the main courtyard setting visual relationships between all parts of the set, in which central void is laid an unexpected green meadow that refers to the idea of the university campus, until then so far away from this context,

The project involves the construction of a body that relates to the various volumes, at the same time building the space of the School, a large and elongated hall, something like the backbone that allows to re-start organs that were previously isolated, making them part of a single structure.