Architecture office MoDusArchitects www.modusarchitects.com has unveiled the Tartan School, an extension to an existing school building located on the outskirts of Terlano’s town centre, nestled in the Adige Valley between the South Tyrolean cities of Bolzano and Merano. Tartan School is both a renovation of, and an intervention to, an existing school?an unwieldy 1990s U-shaped structure that had been modified in the early 2000s and that, like many small-town schools, combined a number of different programs into one. To accommodate the growing population, the township of Terlano decides to enlarge the school and opts to maintain the existing structure while adding onto it.
© Marco Cappelletti
Like many small townships lining the alpine valleys of South Tyrol, Terlano?s expanding center pushes up against the surrounding vineyards and apple orchards, which is where, at this edge, the school finds itself. This adjacency to both town and field is registered by the school’s formal and chromatic strategies, all of which are set against a larger landscape of the traditional alpine fare of reference points and vistas: the historical church tower to the south, the steep mountainside to the north not to mention the medieval profiles of the Neuhaus Castle looking west. © Marco Cappelletti
With an economy of means approach, MoDusArchitects offers new ways in which the three distinct educational programs of the Nursery School, the Kindergarten, and the Youth Center coul...