A public school in the rainforest of Costa Rica by Norte Sur Arquitectos

Description of project by Norte Sur arquitectos

The school is located in Sector Angeles, a remote citadel surrounded by yucca and papaya plantations, at only 15 kilometers from the tropical forest of La Fortuna de San Carlos. It’s student population is 90% formed by children of migrant families who live below the poverty level and in a situation of social vulnerability. For most students, the school provides a safe environment and the only complete meal of the day, one of the main reasons that prevents them from dropping out of school, while their parents’s economy, mostly single women, depends on agricultural activities, which are the main source of their livelihoods.

Norte Sur Arquitectos rethinks the traditional school’s institutional presence as the primary visual and cultural image of the traditional public education to create a colorful landmark that disrupts the monotony of the deep green landscape, to allow the students, school leadership, staff, and parents to develop a fresh and positive image of their physical space and an emotional connection to foster a sense of pride and ownership.

To provide with a comfortable learning environment in a hot and humid tropical region, where the rainy season lasts 9 months a year, the school is a passive bioclimatic structure that allows the building to breath, composed by low maintenance prefabricated systems and low cost materials that come together for construction economy and due to the lack of space to store materials during the construction process.

The entire program is solved in one pavilion with three levels that takes advantage of the preexistent topography of the narrow plot. A wooden skeleton adds warmth and a playful diagonal rhythm across the building, to unify and alternate the different heights and scales between one level and the other. It also contains a gallery where the main circulation areas look down to the lower level corridor, which also serves as a polyvalent space for community meetings, school’s gathering events and playground for the children during the rainy days.

All the classrooms and the cafeteria windows are oriented to capture the diffuse light of the north along the day. A translucent breathing envelope supported by the wooden frames softens and filters the direct sunlight from the south, allowing for crossed ventilation and to gaze at the views towards the green surrounding landscape.