Dante Alighieri High School Extension Bucharest

This intervention responds to a specific context: the communist architectural legacy of Romanian cities before 1989: the grey suburbs of standardized housing blocks typical of the former socialist bloc. Due to excessive standardization, many apartment buildings in Bucharest are nearly identical to others found hundreds of miles away, with little connection to local socio-cultural conditions.

This approach also shaped educational architecture. For almost half a century, only two or three types of high school buildings were replicated across the country. As a result, the plan and volumetric configuration of the existing Dante Alighieri High School can be found in most Romanian cities.

Located in the Titan–Balta Albă district, an area still marked by a lack of identity but also by the clarity of its functionalist urban structure, the project operates within a broader condition where valuable public architecture remains rare. In this context, even small-scale interventions acquire a larger significance, with the potential to influence both the spatial quality of education and the life of the surrounding community.

In the past two decades, very few new educational buildings have been constructed. Most interventions have been limited to thermal insulation and façade repainting often in unsuitable colours, or the addition of pitched roofs that ignore the original functionalist design. Against this background, the project seeks not only to upgrade the existing infrastructure, but to rethink its spatial and social role.

The extension of Dante Alighieri High School addresses the need for a more integrated educational environment, including after-school facilities and complementary activities. These types of spaces are largely missing from schools built during the previous period.

The degraded swimming pool on the eastern side of the site is reused and integrated into one of the new volumes. The space between the new pool hall and the existing sports hall accommodates shared support functions and a small dance studio. Together with the educational spaces on the upper floors, the multifunctional hall, the canteen, and the terraces, these elements are organized around an inner courtyard, the central feature of the project. This courtyard offers an alternative to the existing hard-surfaced schoolyard and reintroduces a spatial hierarchy often absent from late modern school typologies.

Despite regulatory and contextual constraints that tend to isolate such buildings, the project avoids becoming an autonomous object, instead opening itself towards both the interior courtyard and the surrounding urban fabric. The irregularly perforated façade of the educational volume introduces a playful contrast to the monotony of the existing building. The composition evokes filtered light through tree foliage, perceived from the interior. The terraces on the first and second floors extend the recreational areas and can also function as outdoor classrooms.

Although this approach is still uncommon in Romanian school design, the project proposes a different model: one that rethinks the relationship between learning, space, and community, and that may influence how future generations relate to their built environment.