Taking from the cloister typology frequent in schools, Siza started out by drawing a U-shaped structure and then went on to attach the secondary elements to it. Main entry is through a platform raised over the street and flanked by two open-use volumes accommodating the school's general services and the library with its ancillary premises. From the main entrance one can already discern the simple arrangement of the classrooms along two linear two-storey blocks. Between them stretches a half-height open gallery and a portico with slender free-standing pillars that rise from the floor to the roof. Running along the outer sides of the two blocks is another corridor, a closed one this time, which provides access to the classrooms and to the rest of the premises. One of these long strips ends in a prolonga­tion of the portico which encompasses the entire width of the classrooms and, marked by two inclined pillars, forms a space opening on to the courtyard... [+]