Collaborators: Melina Langhi, José Citroni, Sebastián Romero, Leonardo Huspenina, José Pizzi
Project Management: Arq. Alejandro Moreira, Arq. Marcelo Saus
Structural Consultants: Ing. Alejandra Saux, Ing. José Gallo
Structures: Ing. Marcelo Panza
Landscape: Liliana Bock, Mario López, Enzo Fratti
Client: Universidad Católica de Santa Fe
Construction Company: Cocyar S.R.L.
The university is located in Guadalupe, a garden neighborhood of Santa Fe, whose distinctive characteristics are dense forest, low building density, and the use that neighbors give the street as a space of encounter. In this context, the university building, with its pre-existing 12.000 m2 was distinguished by an architecture of a discordant scale regarding its environment. The project proposes to recreate in its expression and its spatiality some of the identity attributes of Guadalupe: the vegetation and the way of appropriating public space. The new building shifts the environmental character of the streets of the neighborhood to its interior through the use of vegetation, both in the facade as an environmental filter, and in the heart of the expansion with the presence of a pink Lapacho tree. Also, an open and transparent ground floor proposes a new dialogue between the building and the city, as an interaction between the central courtyard and the street.
The ground floor acts as an institutional access to the entire educational complex, communicating the north wing and south wing, and setting a cloister around a central courtyard. From this dialogic approach, the building becomes urban and the city defines its architecture, concepts that dematerialize the set demarcations and that propose a new way of uniting society. Regarding materials used and perceptions represented, the building recreates three sequenced episodes that correspond to three material instances: 1 – metal-vegetal, 2 – concrete-vegetal, and 3 – wood-concrete.
A first instance is materialized towards the street through a vegetal truss contained by a galvanized mesh, laid out as a shade for the facade, which benefits the interaction of the building with the Guadalupe surroundings. As a vertical garden, this metallic mesh contains the planting, irrigation and drainage systems for six types of plant species that in each season make a natural-artificial event, versatile and changeable. The building registers a second moment with a succession of spaces that express the interior-exterior articulation, linking the horizontal aperture of the ground floor with the vertical tensions generated by the interior courtyard and its pink Lapacho tree. Like a Roman impluvium, this interior courtyard solves the drainage system of the building through an overflow of rainwater that trickles through a plane of concrete from the roof to a ditch on the ground floor.
The third instance, towards the interior courtyard, offers an answer of contrast and rupture. The wooden parasols transcribe to the interior of the building a play of projected shadows and their reflections on the glazed railings, generating an intense environment where the main interpersonal activities and the encounters between the members of the university community happen.
In this fascinating conversation, critic and theorist Jeffrey Kipnis and architect Steven Holl discuss modern architecture, from competitions to cantilevers, courtesy of our friends at 32BNY.
They begin with the role of high-brow architectural theory, ironically with Kipnis labeling it “a practice for a very small audience”, and questioning whether there is any benefit in increasing that audience through education. The conversation meanders its way to a discussion of structure, where Holl accuses Kipnis of having no interest in structure – to which Kipnis swiftly responds that current architecture is constrained in its approach to structure. “We keep building youth and rectitude in the name of structure” he says, an example being “the last of the great macho tricks” – the cantilevers on Holl’s Tianjin Ecocity Ecology and Planning Museums.
However, in a way Holl gets the last laugh at the end of the video when he displays the changes he made to his Ecocity building as the result of Kipnis’s criticism. Holl takes us back to the starting point of the discussion and, in opposition to Kipnis’s argument, demonstrates the virtues of critical discourse in informing his own design.
People and place, place and people and light and sea…
The commission was to substitute the old church of El Puerto, a modest building that had welcomed the parishioners of this area of the city for 30 years, and which the people of the neighborhood understood as their parish. Understanding the link between parishioners and the sea and to translate it into the project has been a starting point for the project, to create an understanding between people and the architecture.
Rooting architecture in the places it belongs, this is an approach we defend. The identity of the place giving shape to the architecture.
The sea of the sailors that we have known personally and who year after year take the Virgin and Saint Anne in procession, the light from Almeria, white, everything generates a palpable whole in our work, to create links and complicities with the new building.
The program is simple: a meeting and celebration space for at least 400 people, classrooms for catechesis, meeting rooms for the parish and a home for the pastor. The plan is laid out from a continuous wall that folds on itself to form the central nave. It houses the sacristy and rectory, and becomes the bell tower. The chapels are grouped within a stone volume, an intimate area, wrapped by the outer wall. The nave, fractured by a crack, is flooded with light. It is this axis that “pulls” the altar to the streets in a gesture of calling. When the door is opened, the altar is seen from the square, powered by the light axis.
The south facade is isolated from the outside, and a corridor of operable windows is created to generate cross ventilation. There are no air conditioning systems.
The roof is made up of heavy volumes that seem to float due to the light, looking, with weightlessness, the sacred.
The concept of happiness is a self-imposed premise, a feeling to achieve inside the building. Light is the tool we use to achieve it.
Thomas J. Pritzker has announced that the Pritzker Architecture Prize has added two deserving jurors to their esteemed panel, stating: “We are delighted to welcome to the jury two individuals of great insight – Kristin Feireiss and Ratan N. Tata. [...] From different countries and backgrounds, they share a commitment to the art of architecture and its social responsibility. Each will be a tremendous asset to the Pritzker Architecture Prize.”
Kristin Feireiss of Berlin, Germany, is an architecture curator, writer, and editor. She studied art history and philosophy at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt. In 1980, she founded (with Helga Retzer, † 1984) the independent forum for architecture Aedes in Berlin. Since 1994 she has led this international platform in partnership with Hans-Jürgen Commerell. Feireiss’s work deepens understanding of international architecture and urban development including the cultural, social and economic factors involved. As director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) from 1996 to 2001, she brought greater attention to the transformative processes affecting cities and has carried out groundbreaking research in this area. Feireiss was commissioner of the Dutch Pavilion at the Architecture Biennale in Venice in 1996 and 2000; and a 2012 member of the International Jury for the Architecture Biennale in Venice. In 2013 she was named a Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion. Since 2007 she has served in the European Cultural Parliament.
Feireiss has edited numerous monographs and thematic volumes on international architecture and urban context. Her recent books include Architecture in Times of Need, which highlights innovative, sustainable, affordable housing to redevelop New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, after Hurricane Katrina. Feireiss also co-edited two volumes of Architecture of Change: Sustainability and Humanity in the Built Environment. These books feature outstanding sustainable architecture and social initiatives and underscore how architects must address issues of sustainability and social justice in public buildings, housing and city planning.
Feireiss said, “It has always been my conviction, that the perception of architecture needs to be continuously anchored in a broader sense as an essential part of our cultural, social and societal life. The architectural profession carries so many different layers of knowledge, experience and responsibility in reacting to the needs and challenges of a continuously changing world. As such, it is very exciting for me as a jury member of this distinguished prize to contribute to honoring outstanding architecture personalities who combine aesthetic values, societal benefits, integrated urban design and the power of vision in their built oeuvre.”
Ratan N. Tata of Mumbai, India, is the Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata Group. He was Chairman from 1991 until his retirement in 2012. He was responsible for transforming Tata Sons into a group strategy think-tank, and a promoter of new ventures in high technology businesses. Tata serves on the board of directors of Alcoa and on the international advisory boards of Mitsubishi Corporation, JPMorgan Chase, Rolls-Royce, Temasek Holdings, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore. He serves on the board of trustees of the University of Southern California and Cornell University. Tata received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Cornell in 1962. He completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School in 1975. Tata is the Chairman of two of the largest philanthropic trusts in India and has received numerous international honors for his philanthropy. Through Tata Group’s Education and Development Trust, he established a $25 million endowment at Cornell to provide financial aid to undergraduates from India, with preference given to students in the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, among others.
Ratan Tata said, “I look forward to working with my colleagues on the Pritzker Prize jury as we search for excellence in a wide and diverse range of architectural projects – in particular, in architecture that enhances the quality of life.”
Feireiss and Tata join six other members of the jury: Lord Peter Palumbo (Chair), Alejandro Aravena, Stephen Breyer, Yung Ho Chang, Glenn Murcutt, and Juhani Pallasmaa. Martha Thorne is Executive Director.
Client: Ayuntamiento de Pinoso
Budget: 595,580 € (PEC)
“The fear of death is nothing other than considering oneself wise without being so, because it is believing to know about that which we don’t know. Maybe death is the greatest blessing for human beings, no one knows, and yet everyone is afraid as if they knew with absolute certainty that it is the worst of evils.”
(Socrates, 470-399 BC)
Historically, we find different definitions of death that demonstrate to us how this concept has moved from places closer to darkness, pain, and fear, to positions linked with the concept of sadness, change, and light.
Designing a building where one will live possibly the most unknown phase of human existence necessarily involves the assumption of uncertainty as a concept to be included in the design process.
We understand this building as a place that will resist being forgotten, staying in the retina of its users, and therefore a place where the sensitive has to be controlled. Parameters like sound, temperature, light, humidity, lighting, privacy, and the relationship with nature take great importance.
The lot is located outside the village, at the end of a cul-de-sac, attached to the municipal sports center and behind a cultural center, both with great activity. This situation generates some urban tension, because the building is located between various incompatible activities. In this situation, we propose to lay out the building generating a vegetal buffer with sufficient identity to establish itself as ‘center’ of all these public buildings and activities. We created a dense forest of 29 Japanese maples, capable of articulating, differentiating and limiting the various uses.
Additionally, the building is sunken in the back, and like a cave, its main facade juts forward. The green roofs and their vegetal composition exactly the same as the ground emphasize this. This denies any direct views from the adjacent sports tracks, used daily by the municipal sports schools. It is for this reason that the building is set around five courtyards that allow a controlled relationship with the exterior. From inside the halls, only the interiors and the sky are visible.
Formally, the building is broken through a virtual structure of beams and cantilevers, freeing the limits and joints of any structural element. From a far distance, the building is perceived as a mass buried among trees, from a nearer distance, nuances appear that allow one to perceive the instability of the construction – something looking to soothe and displace the user, slowing its access – In its interior, the space is appreciated thin and subtle.
Contrasting ‘the fragile’, identifiable in this project not as an accident but rather as an encounter evoked within, is the formal and material strength of its exterior. The project seeks to slow down the speed with which we live through the confrontation of these two contrasting situations: a light and weightless interior against a blunt and heavy exterior.
The interior-exterior permeability becomes very important in this new place for the people.
Access is twofold: the main access is linked to the reception and cafeteria, as well as the management offices and common uses of the funeral home, located on the front garden, at the limit of the building, without any recess or break to allow the user a reading of the access. It is not signaled. The aim, again, is to displace the user in their relationship with the building. This is, traditionally, a place of family and friendly gatherings, which not only shows affection and respect for the deceased, but also, in many cases, people who had not seen each other in a long time can meet. In this situation, we intend for encounters to happen in the exterior garden and for the access to be collective, which we believe is emotionally interesting for two reasons: the first, greetings and noise can take place outside (the funeral home is a small building under 500 m2); and the second, facing an individual experience of depression, a group normally expresses feelings and emotions of support.
The organization in plan responds to a 5-level privacy diagram from the most public to the private: at level 1, the most public, is the access hall, reception, cafeteria, offices and restrooms; at level 2, is the large waiting area that leads to the chapel, and is also where the secondary exit is located; this area leads to level 3, the waiting room for each of the wake rooms; at level 4, of great importance because it is not superficial but material, is an access area to each room where all the walls are made of beech wood, lighted differently, it is the narrowest space of the building, attempting to set a limit and imply that it is an access to a quiet area; the level 5 is the wake room, which can be configured in various ways according to the amount of public or personal decision, the entire room is conditioned acoustically so that the sound pressure levels do not exceed 35dB.
Each room has a direct relationship with the exterior through one of the courtyards. Each courtyard is at a different level, which causes different views and feelings from the interior of each room. The glass walls from floor to ceiling of the courtyards are set in three different positions, below the ground level, at ground level, and 80cm above ground level. When one enters a half buried building, the perception of the exterior is different, but we believe that it is more interesting to be inside not knowing how deep underground the room is. Also, the courtyards are attached to two volumes that emerge above the green roofs, which increase this feeling. These volumes are the chapel and the area for air conditioning facilities.
The chapel uses in its design the concepts of scale, color, sound and lighting in a very specific order with the intention of generating an environment of ‘de-contextualization of the everyday’ that allows the user, in a way, to evade the secondary and the mundane, to be able to reflect on the important. The chapel is accessed from a large and heavy door, at the same time fragile and unstable, ‘it is the door from a different place’, to pull that door and enter is an unknown experience to the user. This door is part of the spatial boundary of the chapel, lit by the upper windows cracked open and conditioned with great acoustic absorption, a place where silence is heard and where the light marks time.
The chapel has two functions: one is for a group, such as funeral rites, and another is personal and unique, as is the personal recollection. Architecturally, the only difference proposed is the type of artificial lighting. In the case of holding a ritual, lighting fixtures 50cm from the ground are activated, as well as fixtures in the altar area, generating a weightless space where light is below the knees; whereas for the personal recollection, no lighting fixture is activated, and the space is lit from external beacons in the adjacent courtyard, a light that illuminates the ceiling, stretching the space upwards.
For a decade, this small town in Alicante is the residence of immigrants from different cultures and traditions. This situation is increasingly present and real, in this case more than 10% of the population are international immigrants. In addition, beliefs and customs are updated and changed, and even people who share beliefs sees, understands, and lives death differently. Therefore, this funeral home will be used by people of different beliefs and traditions. This apparently circumstantial fact is especially important when designing the spaces and internal circulations. The relationship with death is increasingly different and personal, and this building, architecturally speaking, must be able to address most of these situations.
Although the organization is thought through and defined, it works on several levels of uncertainty and adaptability. This generates complex and diffuse interior views.
We must not forget the effort behind this collective enterprise. The project has a budget of 431.583 €, which involves a considerable effort to find technical building solutions, systems to reduce maintenance costs, and maximum degree of ecological adaptation in terms of landscape and sustainability. This is an intervention that gives more for less.
We have not developed a formal discourse, or a discourse of style, of technique or iconic… we have only worked the project slowly without losing sight of each assessment described above, with particular emphasis in not dissolving them in disciplinary conversations, constantly rescuing them and giving them value.
The emotional is one more factor of study and design. Assuming high degrees of uncertainty and defining the limits of behaviorism, we believe that this may be one of the most attractive study concepts in future projects.
UC Davis West Village is a new 222-acre development in Davis, California that responds to a substantial growth in the number of students, faculty and staff living on the University’s campus. The city of Davis is a unique and cherished community, and great care was taken throughout the design and planning process to pay homage to its history and culture.
The needs for the expanding University include housing for approximately 2,000 students and 350 members of the faculty and staff, as well as a mixed-use retail area, extensive parks and an open space network. SWA’s concept focuses on three key principals: housing affordability, quality of place, and environmental responsiveness. As a result, the Village is the largest zero net energy community in the Unites States, combining compact walkable neighborhoods with extensive sustainable initiatives. Advanced energy conservation measures, the use of energy efficient appliances and optimized solar orientation in the site design has resulted in a reduced energy load that exceeds building standards by more than 50%. This achievement was accomplished by reducing the community energy demand through energy efficient building measures while producing an on-site renewable energy supply.
SWA’s design extended sustainable measures as far as possible, including integrating storm drainage and five miles of bicycle-pedestrian paths into an extensive open space system of parks, greenways, ponds, gardens, and sports facilities. SWA’s design aesthetic focuses on integrating these initiatives in an authentically local manner, employing systems that work best with the local environmental condition. This balance between goals of sustainability and local cultural authenticity propels the project towards a cohesive network of program, circulation and outdoor spaces to serve the community. The project ultimately incorporates affordable housing in a neighborhood setting, while strengthening on-campus involvement, and creates a distinctive place to live in a pedestrian-oriented and bike-friendly environment.
UC Davis West Village | Davis CA. USA | SWA Group
Project Team |
John Wong
Cinda Gilliland
Elizabeth Shreeve
Al Dewitt
Kat Sun
Caroline Templeton
Mary Gourlay
Consultants + Collaborators |
Client | West Village Community Partnership, LLC (WVCP)
Carmel Partners, Inc.
Owner | University of California, Davis
Mixed-Use Architects | Studio E Architects (formerly Mithun)
Student Housing Architects | MVE Institutional
Landscape | Green Works P.C.,
Civil Engineering | Cunningham Engineering
Taking place at the Seoul Museum of Art, the ‘Total Theatre: Interspace Dialogue’ exhibition is featuring the Plushscape installation by Max Kuo of ALLTHATISSOLID. Curated by Regina Shin, the exhibition, which is also a film festival, borrows Gropius and Piscator’s concept of a new kind of theatre to realize a cinema inside of the white cube of a museum. In response to the curatorial agendas of Interspace Dialogue, Plushscape seeks to agitate and amplify the somatic conditions of the viewers’ bodies providing more spatial possibilities in their haptic response to the screening films. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Plushscape is an immersive installation which also functions as lounge seating for viewers of experimental short films. Typically, galleries and museums construct black-box environments where single-channel video installations seek to disembody the viewer within the diegetic space of the film. Here, viewers can freely choose how their bodies will be nestled into this soft, plushy landscape, whether they are prostrate and languid, or upright and alert.
Using the found material bujikpo, a soft synthetic and felted fabric which is typically used as dust barriers on construction sites, no waste is created for the temporary exhibition. This common and low-brow fabric can easily be returned back to the product stream after the close of the installation. Each bolt of fabric (1.8 x 12 meters) is then tucked, woven, and ruched creating stuffed toy-like landscapes enticing bodily interaction.
One crucial and unforeseen effect of the fabric is its material ability to acoustically absorb ambient noise and enhance the films’ audio. The installation also borrows some techniques from traditional Shibori where, prior to tie-dyeing, the fabric is geometrically manipulated with stitching and binding patterns. With these methods, Plushscape accumulates volume, texture, and sculptural exuberance while playfully unraveling throughout the gallery.
The installation design consists of nodal points created from bolts of bujikpo that are woven into soft seating pouches and then attached to a rigid frame. These spongy nests allow for group lounging in a variety of positions and also serve as vertically peaked features within the gallery. From these peaks, Plushscape dissolves into a planimetricfield articulated by reflective streamlines that charge the open gallery space, an alternative to traditionally passive theater pew-seating. In this new landscape, seating, sculpture, and bodies all swerve and twirl about inducing a new socially activated viewing space.
For more information on the exhibition, please visit here.
Collaborator: Pamela Jarpa Rosa
Client: Municipalidad de Salamanca
Ground Surface: 1280 m2
Materials: Estructura principal H.A., Paneles H.A. prefabricado, Vidrio Par, Raulí, Coigüe
Construction: Constructora INCOBAL
Structures: SyS. Mauricio Sarrazin A.
Electrical: ICG S.A.
Plumbing: Roberto Pavéz
Technical Requirements: Equipo SECPLAN Salamanca
The city of Salamanca is located in an inland agricultural valley at the beginning of the Choapa River basin. A vertical and arid hillside landscape defines a long stretch of crops. This project opens a new height for the city of low construction. This height does not have the proportion of a tower, which is understood from the outside; it is five stories that we have understood as an interior with respect to the valley.
The site is adjacent to the Main Square. The first instinct has been to think of the building as part of an urban ensemble in public land, related to the distant and the immediate public spaces.
The building is designed with an extended circulation, that goes from the sidewalk to a terrace on the top floor, through an interior void open to the landscape, which brings together the various municipal services.
Two independent structures are distanced from each other and have a height difference of half a floor. In the interior distance between them and connecting the floor levels of both, we insert a system of ramps complemented by two sets of stairs, one at each end, which serve as shortcuts for work teams and the public.
This space hosts a large number of people daily, hence converging programmatic complexity, consolidating the public nature of the building at the meeting point that the interior circulation proposes for a tight-knit community, in a city of no more than twelve thousand inhabitants. All the free plan levels open towards this space, the public is received here in a friendly manner, and the distant landscape can be appreciated.
The physical attributes of this interior are activated for ventilation by convection – taking in air from an underground courtyard and releasing it from above – and for natural lighting through a skylight at the top of the circulation and through a glazed wall facing north. An eave 6 meters wide regulates light in winter and summer, in the geometric relationship with the solar path.
In this upward circulation, from the urban floor to the fourth floor, the progression is from the programs that receive most public and that are more open to the community, to those with greater privacy and independence.
On each floor, the departments are distributed in the direction perpendicular to the length of the building. From the ramp landings, with views overlooking the square, one goes through a series of layers to get to the interior offices, with views of the river and the northern slope of the valley.
In terms of construction, the remoteness of the site makes access difficult to certain technologies essential for a building of this size and complexity. The building is designed as a series of parts that are mounted onto two main structures, composed of rigid frames and walls made on site that operate jointly. The elements brought to the site, apart from the typical industrial parts, range from ramps and stairs with sliding joints, through all-glass panels and wood ceiling pieces, to the prefabricated concrete slabs that form the perimeter of the building. The latter were mounted in 25 days and have flexible metallic connections.
Architects: Fernández Soler Monrabal Arquitectos
Location: Xátiva, Valencia, Spain
Project Architects: Carlos Soler Monrabal + Luisa Fernández Rodríguez
Technical Architect: Juan Antonio Díaz Romero
Year: 2010
Photographs: Carlos Soler Monrabal
Collaborators: Víctor Soriano Tarín, Ismael Planelles Naya, Alejandro Rodríguez Sáenz, Laura Papíri (Arquitectos)
Engineer: David Gimeno Asensio, Índigo Ingeniería
Client: CIEGSA, Consellería de Educación, Generalitat Valenciana
Construction: Construcciones Luján S.A.
Materials: Lattice: Ladrillo Hidrófugo Macizo; Facade: Ladrillo Hidrófugo Perforado / Marca Malpesa, Color Rojo Bailén
The new Jacinto Castañeda arises from the total replacement of the old school in an adjoining plot, keeping only the block of the gym. The plot of expansion is located on the Cami de la Bola, in the town of Xativa.
This is an expanding area of the town at its southwestern end characterized by medium-density buildings (single-family house in a row of three heights). The plot has a rectangular shape, bounded to the south by Geógrafo Estrabón Street, to the north by the Cami de la Bola, and to the east it shares a party wall with the current center and with another lot of municipal ownership.
The area of the lot had a sharp slope as it was located on the mountainside, with a vertical difference of 12.50 m between the upper and lower streets. For the reasons discussed above, we proposed a replacement of the existing building with a project in two phases: In the first phase we intended to construct a new building with almost all of the program in the adjacent plot, without interfering in the functioning of the existing building.
Once the new building was finished and put into operation, the second phase would take place involving the demolition of the existing building, retaining the areas that could be used such as the gym and the caretaker’s house. We would proceed to build the dining hall and complete the development of the lot by integrating the spaces freed by the demolition to obtain a unitary result. Ultimately and due to the needs of the center and its students, the dining hall was built during the first phase.
The response to the characteristics of the site has been instrumental in the design of the project as well as the relationship of the building with the lot of the existing center and the buildings that are preserved. The building is arranged in three levels that are adapted to the slope of the land to allow a good relationship with the exterior surfaces, facilitating accessibility and avoiding excessive earthworks.
The orientation of the volumes is arranged to capture the maximum natural light and to prevent casting shadows between the built volumes. In this way, the building is located on the western edge of the lot and is terraced to capture light from the south and the east, and at the same time maintain the distance with the existing building.
Access to the center is from the Cami de la Bola because it is the street which is better connected to the rest of the city. Of the three levels mentioned above, the access level is reserved for kindergarten spaces and for the access to the rest of the building, along with some common spaces such as the Multipurpose Room, reception, and administration.
Therefore, access to kindergarten is from the same point but differentiated from the access to primary school, which is slightly higher (+0.90m), establishing an independent operation that allows easy communication.
The kindergarten classrooms are laid out in groups of three oriented north, reinforcing the lighting from the east through skylights that also provide cross ventilation. At higher levels, 18 teaching spaces for primary are laid out in groups of six with their corresponding classrooms for small groups and teaching teams.
The first floor contains six primary school classrooms with common rooms such as the library, multipurpose workshop, computer, and music room. The classrooms are laid out in two parallel areas that make up a longitudinal courtyard and are oriented to the east, while the circulation corridors are oriented to the west. On the upper floor are two other groups of six classrooms, laid out in an L-shape that lies on the upper limits of the lot, and allows the orientation of the classrooms towards the east and south.
This volumetric configuration is adapted to the slope so that each of the three levels has a level access to the exterior, which facilitates evacuation in case of fire and allows quick access to outdoor recreation areas. Vertical cores are distributed at the center and at the ends of the building to facilitate circulation, fire compliance and accessibility.
The dining room and kitchen are located in part of the current lot, and are conceived within an independent single-story volume that absorbs the existing transformation center. The building for the new center has been arranged to allow the integration of the two lots ensuring a result consistent with the design of outdoor spaces.
After the demolition of the current facility, we completed the playground for kindergarten and the sports track for the Primary School, which are located on a lower level (ground level), whereas the playground for the Primary School is located on an upper level (first floor level).
To bridge these two levels we use a strip consisting of a set of stairs and ramps that are flush with the extension of one of the arms of the kindergarten building. This mechanism allows us to generate the necessary exterior space to locate the three classrooms required as possible expansion.
At the top of the lot, one of the classroom blocks with north-south orientation is laid out creating a porch that accesses another ramp that ensures accessibility to the gym and makes room for the expansion of the center with six extra primary school units, as shown in the drawings provided.
Valencian ball games are located at the top of the lot next to the sports track and the gym. They are laid out longitudinally along the south-east boundary of the lot, forming an access to the sports track from the street.
