The spaces of Clorofilla
Nido Scuola Clorofilla was founded in September 2012 thanks to a women’s entrepreneurship initiative, inside a late 19th-century historical building in downtown Milan, characterized by a series of columns and arches that surround its perimeter and a central patio that illuminates the surrounding spaces with natural light.
Our educational projects, in fact, are also based on the various areas in the school, which allow the children to be autonomous and independent and which also helps the teachers to observe and document the children’s games, research and discoveries.
According to Loris Malaguzzi, the areas in the school act as a ‘third educator’, after family and teachers. This philosophy sums up why the children’s environment is so important in their development.
“Progettare una scuola è innanzitutto realizzare uno spazio di vita e di futuro, e richiede di produrre una ricerca comune tra pedagogia, architettura, sociologia e antropologia”
The large glass windows dividing the various rooms creates a series of visible and invisible spaces and helps to create a transparent and luminous enviroment, two very important design factors. The children, even intheir own classrooms, feel part of a large, open school as a whole. Thanks to the glass walls, natural light permeates Clorofilla through large skylights, another element whichh the school very luminous.
Nido Scuola Clorofilla is on two floors. On the ground floor is the Piazza, the place where children of different ages meet and play, with a patio and a large tree – a camphor tree – which is the main symbol representing the school’s vital life force. Around the square are the nursery and school classrooms, as well as the kitchen, swimming pool and offices. On the second floor is the Body and movement atelier (gym), with a climbing wall where children can safely discover how fun climbing Is. There is also the Garden Atelier which the children can see while their eating lunch in the piazza next to the kitchen, and the children eating lunch in the piazza can see the children on the rooptop garden through the skylight. The garden is home to fruit trees, aromatic plants and a large vegetable garden where the children learn how plants grow and how to take care of them.
