The project for the Beacon school came from the dare to insert an innovative pedagogical project in an estate built in an old industrial district in the central area of São Paulo. The program provides a school for approximately 1,000 students, from elementary school to high school. All accommodated in an inclusive space that, at one and the same time, offers the whole structure specific to each cycle and allows integration among students of different ages. The integration proposal goes beyond: it encourages the permanent rapprochement between students, teachers, coordinators and employees. The property is composed of a complex of industrial sheds, now in disuse. If on the one hand the sheds appear rustic and gigantic for the scale of the children, on the other they represent a generously built and fairly solid heritage.
The proposal starts with the idea of making full use of this built heritage and, from this monumental structure, and introduces new elements capable of accommodating the specific activities of the school and simultaneously introducing the appropriate scale and the appropriate finishing materials in order to a better use of the space. All the new elements are built with light industrial components, such that the insertion of these elements took place as an assembly in the place, seeking to oppose clearly to the existing sheds, thus establishing a frank dialogue between the preexisting building and the new elements.
