Given the apparent floor-plan breakup, the outline and the metallic finish of its roofs unify this project for a school in Zaragoza.
Its position on the urban edge and the decision to connect the interior and exterior spaces in a fluid manner led to addressing this project as an open organisation of linear teaching elements that colonise the place with an extensive outline, grouping it together around the outdoor spaces that open up to the landscape and configure the different playgrounds.
The extensive teaching programme includes a nursery school comprising 12 units, a dining hall for 300 pupils, a 24-unit primary school with a multiple-use hall and a library, plus the outdoor areas, sports tracks and playgrounds corresponding to each area. The introduction of the buildings into the plot also answers its geometric constraints and the need to avoid the shadow cast by the nearby residential building.
In the primary school, which develops on a single storey, the roof planes ascend, descend and break up according to the different interior spaces, providing each use with a specific height. The exposure of the section in the external elevation reveals a broken profile, sharp and identifiable. The staggered section of the nursery classrooms provides double lighting and an increase in its depth, with a square floor plan that is highly suited to its use and size. The transition between the interior space of the classroom and the outside is gradual, always going through a protected porch space and an enclosed playground space.
On the outside the school is defined by its continuous roof of sloping planes resting on walls clad in large-format ceramic pieces. Fixed ceramic slats and adjustable slats in anodised aluminium, plus the metallic finish of the porches in continuity with the roof, complete the building’s external image. Inside, the buildings respond to the children’s capabilities and skills, establishing a clear differentiation between the surfaces within their reach –floors and plinths—which display material and colour variations and the neutral finishes above this level on walls and ceilings.
