Project description by Sogo Arquitectos
The Mare de Déu de Gràcia public school is located in Biar, a town of about 4,000 inhabitants located in the easternmost part of the Sierra Mariola. Its urban center, with a medieval layout, is crowned by a castle built in the 13th century from which you can see, on the one hand, the dry and diligently cultivated lands and, on the other, the mountains that extend to the smooth beaches of the sea. Mediterranean.
These cultivated lands are marked by mansions on which they depend, sober houses of considerable size, perfectly anchored to the land to which they belong. A few meters from the well-kept historic center of Biar and already ascending the mountain, there are a series of industrial buildings and a public school that includes two buildings built between the seventies and eighties.
The buildings have no value, but they are located on this terraced mountain on platforms delimited by lines of large cypresses that make up a beautiful outdoor space.
Mare de Déu de Gràcia de Biar School by Sogo Arquitectos. Photograph by Mariela Apollonio.
The project consisted of completing the school's deficiencies. Add a classroom for the youngest children, a gym for the older ones, make all the exterior and interior spaces accessible and improve the energy efficiency of the existing buildings.
In addition to meeting these objectives, we wanted to take advantage of the intervention to give the school an identity that it did not have, because it was made up of constructions that either came from projects sent from a ministry without taking into account the place, or from projects that were They identify with a time, but not with a place.
We wanted the school to be anchored to the land, like the mansions that own the cultivated land. Give Biar the opportunity to grow with the same quality with which it preserves its center and its fields.
Mare de Déu de Gràcia de Biar School by Sogo Arquitectos. Photograph by Mariela Apollonio.
The garden, with its terraces and large cypresses always sunny, produces a particular tranquillity and only needs small interventions to erase the inappropriate elements built over time. We thus converted the garden into the centre of three isolated buildings that are connected on just two levels, solving both the operation of the centre and accessibility.
To locate the buildings in the plan we start from the geometry of the garden, closing it in a parallel direction to the cypresses with the children's classroom, and placing the gymnasium as a continuation of the existing building.
In both the new and the old building, operations have been carried out that contribute to the garden becoming the centre. The height and inclination of the slabs that cover the children's classrooms, ascending towards the outside, allow double lighting and ventilation in the classrooms and the glass surfaces a wide view of the verticality of the cypresses.
Mare de Déu de Gràcia de Biar School by Sogo Arquitectos. Photograph by Mariela Apollonio.
The new buildings are built with exposed concrete walls and slabs, formwork with wooden slats, which stiffen and close a light metal structure confined by glass surfaces and thermoclay walls rendered in the colours of the earth, like the mansions.
The walls, structure, rendering and glass surfaces appear identical on the outside and inside of the building, which contributes to the garden being perceived consistently.
The same continuity occurs in the pavements, polished concrete on the inside and washed on the outside. The exterior stairs of the old school were covered with San Vicente stone, a local grey stone, a material that we have used for all the new exterior and interior stairs and the flooring of toilets and changing rooms.
We have solved the flexible floors, required for children's classrooms and the gym, with linoleum, composed of linseed oil, pine resin and cork powder, in its original version, with natural pigments.
Mare de Déu de Gràcia de Biar School by Sogo Arquitectos. Photograph by Mariela Apollonio.
The gym, intentionally located on the same platform as the ground floor of the existing building, has its access on the façade perpendicular to the garden, but the inclination of its roofs slides into ramps that lead to the sports court. In this way, the building becomes a balcony that overlooks the garden and from which you can see the games on this court located on its lowest platform.
The school is built within a program promoted and financed by the regional administration, and the Department of Education, and managed by the Biar City Council. The allocated budget comes from modules set by the Department, the same for all schools. The construction systems and materials have also been chosen to provide greater quality to the school, eliminating items that are not necessary to be able to carry out the necessary ones with greater care.
