On the occasion of Italian Design Day in the World 2025, entitled "Inequalities. Design for a better life", a meeting was held today at the Italian Embassy in Vilnius with architect Alessandro Scandurra, founder of the Scandurra architecture studio in Milan and winner, with 'NEW: Neighbourhood for Educational Wonder', of the international competition 'Future School for Ukraine' organised by the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry to create a project to be used for the reconstruction of school buildings in Ukraine.
During the meeting, which took place in the presence of the Italian ambassador to Vilnius, Emanuele de Maigret, and the Lithuanian ambassador with responsibility for the recovery and reconstruction of Ukraine, Darius Skusevicius, Scandurra presented the project and discussed the ideas behind it.
"The competition was to devise a school model that could be adapted to the whole of Ukraine, a country with significant internal climatic, environmental and cultural differences," said Scandurra. We chose to create an infrastructure capable of adapting to the most diverse needs without distorting itself. Inspired by the medieval hortus conclusus, we created a system that encloses both the school space and the courtyards within it'.
In this regard, Scandurra emphasised that the project aims to transform school spaces into true civic centres capable of fostering the strengthening of relations between generations and contributing to the strengthening of the link between the school space and the external social fabric.
"We opted for traversable, porous, single-storey objects, surrounded by an enclosure made of debris found on the site to which soil is added from which spontaneous vegetation can grow, a symbol of the future and hope," concluded Scandurra, emphasising how the project responds to an idea of architecture made to last over time and to be adapted to needs unknown at the time of design.
Ambassador de Maigret, in turn, welcomed the project, emphasising that it was an expression of the common commitment of Italy and Lithuania to the reconstruction of Ukraine and a valuable example of trilateral cooperation.
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