Ferreira Dias School

The Ferreira Dias Secondary School located in Cacém, a city on the outskirts of Lisbon, was built in the late 1950s according to a type design for “industrial and commercial” teaching, idealised and promoted by the Portuguese “Second Republic” between the 1950s and 1960s.
In 2007, the Portuguese State implemented an ambitious program to refurbish public schools nationwide, and this project is part of that program.
The new plan for the Ferreira Dias School foresees a considerable expansion in order to accommodate the growing demand that has taken place over the last years. If we exclude the outdoor covered areas, the intervention almost doubles the gross construction area from the current 10 000m2 to 18 000m2.
In an initial approach, we quickly realised that this expansion could only be possible at the expense of a frank reduction of the exterior space which, along with the comfort and working conditions of the classrooms, is the most important attribute of any teaching facility, be it elementary, secondary or university.
Faced with this fact, the primary objective became to condense the new buildings so that they occupied as little space as possible and enabled the exterior spaces to be organised / designed not as spare areas between buildings, but with their own character and purpose. Spaces designed with the same care one uses to design a lab, a classroom or a library. Spaces designed as a continuum of the buildings’ interiors so that, as a whole, they allow 1700 students to “breathe” and spend their energy. Ninety seven classrooms and seventy classes; more than double than the usual for this type of school.