COLABS Panamerican School of Porto Alegre / Santini e Rocha Arquitetos

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Text description provided by the architects. The Panamerican School of Porto Alegre is an international school with approximately 400 students.

In recent years, with a prospect of increasing enrollments, a master plan was drawn up by the North American office H2L2, a specialist in educational architecture.

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Santini and Rocha Arquitetos was contracted to develop the architectural projects and adapt the master plan for effective use. Several architectural projects of renovation and expansion were carried out.

The COLABS project is one of these projects, contemplating classrooms, open and covered areas and a terrace.

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In this project, 3 large classrooms with laboratory format were constructed, each room with approximately 100.00 m2. These rooms allow more than one class to develop activities and more than one learning model to be developed. This footage is roughly double the amount of footage normally used in classrooms in Brazil.

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The classrooms were designed according to the example of international schools. One of the classrooms is called the Makerspace, where practical activities are developed by the students,

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such as robot assembly, printing of prototypes in 3D printer and other projects developed by them. The use of all available technology is encouraged.

In addition to the classrooms, an open and covered area was built at the entrance of the new building and a rooftop with greenery. This terrace, called a rooftop, allows a rest and leisure area to be offered. Groups of students gather to talk and study outdoors.

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The structure of the building is made of reinforced concrete with pre-shaped trellised flat slabs. On the last floor was built a volume in metal structure and light steel frame closures to reduce the weight of the structure. As sustainability measures, in addition to the green terrace, brises were used to reduce the solar incidence on the west façade and used heat exchangers in the classrooms, which help to reduce the energy consumption of air conditioners.

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