In Camerino, a university town with a population of 7,000, the renovation of a children's music school has been completed. The building, destroyed by an earthquake in 2016, was restored in just 148 days - amid all the difficulties associated with the pandemic and the widespread lockdown, it looks almost like a feat. The project was initiated by the young architectural studio Harcome, and Alvisi Kirimoto finalized it and brought it to life. The funds for the construction of the school - almost 2 million euros - were allocated by the Andrea Bocelli charitable foundation. Note that the institution, named after another Italian tenor, Franco Corelli, is designed for 160 students, including kids from zero to six years old.
The geometry of the two-storey building follows from the features of the site located on the slope of the hill: the trapezoidal volume repeats the contours of the relief, and the lower level serves as a support for it; in this case, the height difference is read only from the ends of the building. The "airy" envelope, made up of perforated white metal sheets, gives the building a certain cloud-like appearance. I must say that between the panels and the "box" there is a gap of several tens of centimeters, which ensures the diffused light penetrates into the school premises.
Total building area - 700 m2… On the ground floor there is a concert hall (226 m2) with a capacity of 180 people, on the second - office premises and nine classrooms with an area of 30 to 14 m2.
The concert hall, despite its modest size, is distinguished by a rather bold design: concrete - "background" - surfaces are combined with wooden components: suspended panels on the ceiling, lamellas separating the hall space from the corridor - all of this is made of wood.
The staircase connecting the levels is unexpectedly colored orange, which gives the interior some liveliness. This "echo" is repeated in classroom interiors.
In the part of the building that adjoins the hill, there is a recording studio and an electronic music class. These rooms are painted in dark gray and are clad from the inside with wooden acoustic panels. All rooms on the second floor have round windows located at different heights from the floor level. Direct sunlight does not penetrate through the windows: the openings are covered with the perforated sheets mentioned above.
