The scheme’s objective is to explore the initiative for a design concept integrating both senior living and a secondary
education facility, as well as additional co-learning, co-fittness, co-care and co-creation facilities and programs.
The aim of Juntos Villa De Floripa, meaning The Together Village of Floripa is to promote health and wellbeing through a
community eco lifestyle. This will be done by having a central communal garden-providing a healthy learning activity for both
students and the senior citizens. The communal garden will also produce fresh seasonal produce for the community’s kitchen
and for the broader community by allowing the residents and students to have regular “farmers” markets.
Promoting traditional Azorean crops as well as providing fresh local produce for the residents of the surrounding
neighbourhood.
The garden will also allow the high school students to pursue agricultural studies that will provide a pathway for
them to then study Agricultural Sciences at the local university Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina.
Another vocational pathway for students is to get practical nursing experience from tending to the medical needs of
the elderly residents. Thus, this proposal aims to give students a practical, joyful and montessori style education, and aims to give the senior residents a chance to pass on their knowledge/culture, enjoy their lives, and interact with both students and the greater community of Florianopolis
Florianopolis is in Santa Catarina of Brazil. The site is in Saco Dos Limões, a neighbourhood in Florianopolis, the name translates to bag of lemons, earning it’s name because of the prolific citrus growth of the area since the late 18th century. Lemons were a very popular and important fruit for
vessels as they prevented scurvy, thus ships would stop at Saco Dos Limoes, to buy lemons and other fresh vegetables. Florianopolis experiences subtropical warm weather very similarly to Brisbane, Australia.
Another historical and important produce of Florianopolis and the Azorean people there are the mullet fish. Mullet fishing is a
very important community activity, men go out in boats to trap the fish with nets, then bring in the fish to the shore where the
rest of the community await eagerly to help pick up all the fish, they will share the fish around with everyone and the mullet is
used in many different kinds of dishes. Today Azorean culture is still celebrated in Florianopolis through the architecture, events, and food.
response and vision
WHAT IS THE STORY?
The story behind Juntos Villa de Floripa, is the story of the people. It is to strengthen Azorean culture, the children’s education, and fulfillment of the elderly. Each aspect of this project is a strand that will weave together a brightly coloured fabric of health, joy, well-being, learning, performing, gardening, healthy eating, tradition, modernity, culture, and creativity.
ARCHITECTURAL VISION
The vision for Juntos Villa de Floripa is to create an environment where both the young and old can come together to work on projects, live and eat well, provide goods and services for the broader community, learn from each other, preserve Azorean tradition and improve both the quality of life for senior citizens and the educational system for high school kids in Florianopolis.
ARCHITECTURAL RESPONSE
Whilst keeping the school on one side of the site, and the residents on the other side to keep the peace of the residents and for ease of access for the students, the site merges both groups of people together through a centralised design that is embodied as a large circular seasonal garden that reaches out to all corners of the site. This provides direct pathways, circulation, and connection between both sides of the landscape and gives the inhabitants plenty of spaces to interact, meet, gather and come together.
THE WHY
Sir Ken Robinson an educator has emphasised that, “we can only succeed if we recognise that education is an organic system, not a mechanical one. Successful school administration is a matter of engendering a helpful climate rather than “command and control”
Educators like Robison and the Montessori method has strongly given us the passion to design a campus that encompasses these creative strategies of learning, that allows the students to learn
“We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.”
-Winston churchill
“Design has caused a lot of our economic problems and it can create a lot of the economic solution….Everything traces back to systems design.”
– Janis Birkeland
Theresia James
Theresia has developed a practical, compassionate, and holistic architectural approach during her time at QUT completing her Master of Architecture, and through the completion of the Diploma of Building and Design. Additionally, through working on 6 building projects while working with the company GATCHI. She has worked on construction sites and has done everything from drawings, concreting, kitchen installations, carpentry, electrical light wiring, painting, and landscaping. This has given her a real hands-on, practical, realistic and functional design ethos, with a focus on sustainable, minimalist, raw, human centred, adaptable and vernacular architecture. She believes everything in life is interconnected and knows the power of good design and it's ability to change lives.
