When Brazilian bank Bradesco vacated a charmless 1970s office block in the Greater São Paulo city of Osasco, few imagined the building would go on to enjoy a second life as an innovative new high school. Nonetheless, this was exactly the future envisioned by Fundação Bradesco, the charitable foundation set up by the bank.

Expanding the building would help the foundation alleviate overcrowding at its nearby Osasco school, one of 40 such facilities that it runs across Brazil to provide free education to over 100,000 largely disadvantaged children ill-served by Brazil’s woefully inadequate system. And for Shieh Arquitetos, charged with overseeing the transformation, the project was an opportunity to inject new thinking into an educational network that still produces uninspired schools with inward-looking classrooms feeding off joyless, narrow corridors. Though the project was a private commission, Shieh Shueh Yau, founder of the local firm, aims to spur change in public school design, opening up possibilities for more social environments, combined with daylit, flexible spaces—ideas long adopted in the U.S. and other countries. “I hope the project will demonstrate how architecture can play a part in improving education here,” he says.