THE UPTURNED SCHOOL: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY EDUCATIONAL CO-DESIGN EXPERIENCE FOR ‘EDUCATING FURNISHINGS’ AND UNCONVENTIONAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

This contribution aims to explore the pioneering vision of the ‘upturned school’ as an innovative educational paradigm for the learning of children and young teens. This vision is rooted in anti-authoritarianism, individual freedom, and participation, in a perspective, still relevant today, that invites us to rethink the school as a contemporary environment, freed from ministerial rigidity and ca-pable of reflecting the evolution of educational needs (De Carlo, 1968). Aware that from the formation of children can derive the creation of a future society that is more or less free and creative (Munari, 1977), and that this formation can take place through that “very serious business useful for understanding the world” that is play (Mari, 2011), the upturned school promotes an unconven-tional learning environment. This environment is designed so that young people can innovate and transform thinking into reality. Inspired by the ideas of ‘pre-pared environment’ (Montessori, 1931) and environment as a ‘third teacher’ (Malaguzzi, 2010), it is rooted in a fundamental question: if teaching aims to train and teach how to think, how to live in today’s world, how can school train people, if it does not pose the question of bringing young people closer to the very concept of happiness? (Santoianni, 2016). In this complex framework of positions, questions, and expectations, a didactic workshop experimentation was launched involving students and teachers of the CdL in Community Design of the ‘Federico II’ University of Naples, joined by lecturers from the Humanities Department, in the development of a co-design process with the ‘Europa Unita’ State Comprehensive Institute in the Salicelle district of Afragola (NA). The in-terdisciplinary approach supports an operational methodology where the ped-agogical design of learning environments coexists with the architectural design of spaces, furniture, and educational objects. The latter were co-designed starting from the needs and desires of the school community and based on pedagogical criteria that revolve around certain keywords relating to the cur-rent experimental models of education, which promote the idea of interaction, flexibility, and open to the world of the implicit. The design outcomes – pre-sented in November 2023 as part of the 3rd edition of the “Afragola Film Fes-tival of Architecture and Design – Beyond the Vision”- are proposed as evolving answers, versatile containers for nurturing thought, “elastic” containers that expand the spatial dimension, opening the school to places, territories, the world, cultures. These environments are conceived as labs where nature and artifacts mix and coexist dynamically, where the interior is an intimate space that becomes plural as it opens up relationships. Within this framework, the construction of a more inclusive, sustainable educational future inspired by 826 children’s creativity takes a bold step forward and welcomes the non-conform-ist utopia, which gives backspace to the pleasure of life (Vittoria, 1987). In this way, children and youths, as social innovators, become the protagonists of peer experimentation, capable of challenging the adult world, and can play the role of ‘pattern destroyers’ and activators of visionary ‘models’ of a desirable future.