I think the colours stand out much more than if it was all painted and lively – which can be quite overwhelming sometimes.

It’s hard to say what effect this would actually have on young minds but I wouldn’t judge it too harshly and too fast. And I think it’s far less anonymous than a contemporary glazed building would be.

As far as context is concerned, how many references does each building actually have to make to things like the coastal location and heritage? How explicit would you like those things to be?

As for culture, I’m afraid I’ll have to take a post-modernist stance on the question: in this context I find eclecticism to be preferable to international uniformity.

Should this school reflect Pontinha’s identity as one of the strongholds of the Carnation Revolution (which essentially freed Portugal from the grip of the Estado Novo )? Should it reference the district’s coastal geography? Should it quote Portugal’s Moorish heritage? Wouldn’t children benefit from such references?

I don’t claim to have any answers. I’m just submitting to you the fact that modernism tends to forgo these questions in order to pursue what some architects hold as universal truths. It can be kind of alienating.

Of course, modernism applies to public infrastructure: Brasilia could only be built in the international style so as to better reflect the city’s role as the political heart of a vast and multicultural country.

As for humanising the architectural program, I find the original school to be more in keeping with modernist theories (see Alfred Roth and his school pavilions) while the extension presented above is just an aesthetic quote.