One of the great challenges for the Junquera Arquitectos studio in designing the school was to turn a small space surrounded by single-family homes into a protected space, creating an oasis away from the outside, isolated from the urban environment. To achieve this goal, the ground floor was lowered, creating a space sheltered from the views of the outside environment by walls of vegetation.
The school has classrooms, a library and a children's area. The spaces open to the south through skylights and lattices, closing off from the built urban environment. Another fundamental element in the project is the intermediate space that replaces the idea of recreation as such, disorganized and chaotic. Thanks to various activities carried out outdoors, this space becomes an essential place for the relationship between students, paying more attention to current pedagogy.
Conde Orgaz Studio School by Junquera Arquitectos. Photograph by Lucía Gorostegu.
Project description by Junquera Arquitectos
The project was commissioned by the Fundación Estudio, a non-profit foundation that guarantees the continuity of the pedagogical model that the Institución Libre de Enseñanza started at the end of the 19th century. A secular model, aimed at "forming individuals" with the capacity for understanding, freedom of thought and where the value of beauty, supported by aesthetic training, is the protagonist.
To continue this pedagogical model, the studio has faced this new institutionalist building by focusing attention on the three spaces necessary in the architecture. It has created its own exterior space, creating an oasis isolated from the urban environment that surrounds it. A concave space surrounded by the buildings themselves, with plant curtains so that the children take ownership of the horizon under the sky, a horizon that is very difficult to achieve in the centre of Madrid.
As for interior spaces, the studio has designed classrooms, a library and other teaching spaces on the scale of the children, open to the south and closed to the built environment using skylights and lattices. There is also a fundamental intermediate space in the pedagogical model in which there is no recess as such, disorganized and chaotic, replaced by outdoor activities, gymnastics, sports, dancing. Thanks to these activities, the intermediate space takes on its role as a place of relationship between students, paying more attention to current pedagogy, creating wide corridors open to terraces, porches, covered halls, etc.
The great challenge of the project has been to create its own space, an oasis away from the outside in a plot of small dimensions and surrounded by very present single-family homes, generating a friendly quality space where children develop and learn to live together. To minimize this presence, it has been decided to sink the ground floor, creating a protected, sunny space surrounded by green walls. A space delimited by three volumes arranged in a U shape facing and open to the south.
The single-storey children's volume is a place where children can live in a separate world in contact with the earth, enhancing the inside-outside relationship. In addition, the volume contains three completely transparent classrooms connected to each other, where an interrelationship is generated between groups of different ages, learning from each other.
The library, closed in on itself, seeks calm through overhead lighting and two large openings that frame the plant vines of changing tones throughout the year.
The longitudinal volume of the classrooms is a large modular structure nave understood as a flexible and versatile space that delimits the space to the north. The classrooms are joined two by two by mobile panels to encourage activity between different classes. Thanks to their transparency, they open to the south seeking natural light. Each classroom is threaded to a wide corridor that doubles as a terrace, incorporating the outside space into the classroom. Towards the north, the openings are reduced and wrapped with lattices for greater privacy from the neighbours.
Below ground level another unique space is created, a basement with natural cross ventilation opening onto an English patio that will one day become a large vertical garden.
