School for dogs, humans and other species. Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba
30/11/2021.
[Brunete] Spain
metalocus, VALERIA OZUNA
metalocus, VALERIA OZUNA
The Educan school, designed by the team formed by Eeestudio and Lys Villalba, was born as a school project for dogs, humans, and other species. Located in the Madrid municipality of Brunete, the project is born as a multi-species design architecture.
With this building, the aim is to recover the environmental conditions of the agricultural ecosystem where it is developed, characterized by crop fields, in a rural environment altered by urbanization and intensive agriculture with pesticides.
With this building, the aim is to recover the environmental conditions of the agricultural ecosystem where it is developed, characterized by crop fields, in a rural environment altered by urbanization and intensive agriculture with pesticides.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by Javier de Paz García.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by Javier de Paz García.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by Javier de Paz García.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by Javier de Paz García.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by Javier de Paz García.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by Javier de Paz García.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by Javier de Paz García.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by Javier de Paz García.
Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba. Photograph by Javier de Paz García.
Site plan. Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba.
Location. Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba.
Ground floor plan. Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba.
Section west-east. Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba.
Section north-south. Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba.
Axonometría. Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba.
Constructive ecosystem. Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba.
Construction details. Educan by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba.
The project by Eeestudio and Lys Villalba is born under the confluence of materials and constructive innovation. Likewise, the design of this building revolves around animals, and it is in this way how the ecosystem it generates regulates itself and improves the conditions of humans and animals that will use the space.
Through the use of different construction techniques, production systems, and trades, Educan shows that agricultural architectures can also be places of exploration and architectural innovation.
Through the use of different construction techniques, production systems, and trades, Educan shows that agricultural architectures can also be places of exploration and architectural innovation.
Description of project by Eeestudio + Lys Villalba
01. Multi-species architecture. Eva, Carlos, two Belgian Malinois – Bicho and Bomba –, Harris the owl, five swift families, six kestrel families, and twenty sparrows, are all companion species. They live and learn together in this building, thirty kilometers west of Madrid. Sitting in amongst fields, in a rural environment transformed over recent decades by urban development and intensive pesticide-reliant agriculture, Educan School is trialing ways to recover the conditions of the ecosystem.
Its architecture is a multi-species design. While the two main classrooms are busy with dog-human pairs practicing agility or dog sports like Schutzhund, birds’ nest on the upper floor’s nest-facade, boasting ideal views and orientation. Small birds of prey feed on rodents, maintaining a balance with crops and other local flora. Small birds and bats – who also inhabit the lettering on the south facade – feed on insects, including mosquitoes that can carry certain canine diseases, and are part of the pollination cycles of flowers and plants in the surrounding fields. Sparrows made an impromptu appearance in this self-regulating ecosystem, nesting in the circular holes of the container edges.
Non-humans are at the center of the design. The floors, usually designed for people and their shoes, are adapted to the pads and joints of canine paws: the training classrooms use removable rolls of PTE-based synthetic turf, approved for canine training, while theory classrooms are finished in semi-polished, exposed aggregate concrete made of river pebbles. The average eye height drops from over a meter and a half to just half a meter. Interior openings are raised to heights of more than one meter to avoid doggy distractions; louvered window shutters shade the south facade, leaving enough space below for dog traffic to the outside, where rainwater from the roof is harvested in large troughs for dogs and birds. A spoken word turns to bark, and the interior surfaces are clad with sound-absorbing pyramid foam insulation, minimizing echo, noises, and reverberation.
02. Material crossovers and constructive innovation. The building uses a diverse range of materials, combining different building techniques, trades and production systems: from material ecology and waste reduction with the reuse of shipping containers, to the adaptability and thermal mass provided by in-situ concrete and its smooth and undulating formwork using sheets recovered from the off-cuts for the new trusses; from the standardisation and optimisation of industrial metal sheet panels to the precision of laminated timber CNC-cut joints; from the industrial standardisation of basic ingredients like 40' HC containers to the hand-crafted ironwork offering customised joints, bespoke assemblies and unique elements such as bench legs, lamps or large sliding doors helping open and close the different spaces; from automated air conditioning systems to manual bioclimatic control elements like the perforated shutters or roller blinds; from the material weight of the foundations and concrete walls to the lightness of the rest of the dry-assembled elements.
Educan is also an experiment that demonstrates that agricultural architectures, usually considered lesser within the discipline itself, can also be places of exploration and architectural innovation.
More information
Architects
Design team
Lead Architects.- Enrique Espinosa, Lys Villalba. Team.- Maria Paola Marciano, Irene Domínguez.
Collaborators
Structural Engineering.- Mecanismo. Quantity surveyor.- Javier Reñones Marín. MEP Engineering.- Alberto Espinosa. Technical Consultant.- Jorge López Hidalgo. Steel Constructions.- Miguel Torrejón.
Client
Builder
Servicios Integrales Alji.
Area
300 sqm.
Dates
2020.
Location
Brunete, Spain.
Photography
Enrique Espinosa. Eeestudio
Enrique Espinosa is a co-founder architect of PKMN architectures (2006-2016), director of Eeestudio since 2016 and professor and researcher at the Madrid School of Architecture (ETSAM) since 2015 within the CoLaboratorio teaching unit.
Her practice revolves around collaborative production and learning processes, working in open networks.
He has participated in other contexts such as the Venice Biennale 2016 and 2018, or as a guest editor in the magazine Arquitectura 375 of the COAM.
Her practice revolves around collaborative production and learning processes, working in open networks.
He has participated in other contexts such as the Venice Biennale 2016 and 2018, or as a guest editor in the magazine Arquitectura 375 of the COAM.
Lys Villalba
Lys Villalba (Madrid, 1981) is an architect, educator and independent researcher, graduate of the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid ETSAM (M.Arch 2008) and Visiting Scholar at Columbia University’s GSAPP (2016-2017). Her work explores the intersection of architecture and the social, technological, and political realms, and was nominated for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative 2016.
Her research The City Writes Itself received the Spanish Royal Academy of Fine Arts/Arquia fellowship 2016, the Matadero Madrid/Tokyo Wonder Site grant 2015, and was exhibited at the Japan Pavilion 16th Venice Biennale 2018.
Villalba is cofounder of Zoohaus Collective, whose project Collective Intelligences has developed fieldwork research and prototyping projects in 15 countries, in collaboration with universities, cultural institutions and local collectives; and has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna.
Villalba is a professor at IED Madrid since 2012, and has been a Visiting Proffesor at different architecture
schools worldwide, such as CUINDA Bangkok (Thailand), Keio University Tokyo (Japan), Lebanese American University New York (USA), Universidad Javeriana Bogotá (Colombia), FAU Arquitectura Santiago (Chile); and a guest juror and lecturer at Harvard GSD Tokyo, University of Virginia, Bartlett School of Architecture, ETSAM, and Columbia GSAPP, among other institutions. Her works and articles have been published in MoMA Ed., Architectural Design, Damdi, El País, World Architecture magazine, Urbanism and Architecture, Arquitectura Viva, Domus web, etc.
Previously she worked as an architect at Foreign Office Architects in London (UK), Herzog & de Meuron in
Basel (Switzerland), Izaskun Chinchilla Architects in Madrid (Spain), and was a member of the editorial board of Arquitectura Viva magazine in Madrid (Spain).
Her research The City Writes Itself received the Spanish Royal Academy of Fine Arts/Arquia fellowship 2016, the Matadero Madrid/Tokyo Wonder Site grant 2015, and was exhibited at the Japan Pavilion 16th Venice Biennale 2018.
Villalba is cofounder of Zoohaus Collective, whose project Collective Intelligences has developed fieldwork research and prototyping projects in 15 countries, in collaboration with universities, cultural institutions and local collectives; and has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna.
Villalba is a professor at IED Madrid since 2012, and has been a Visiting Proffesor at different architecture
schools worldwide, such as CUINDA Bangkok (Thailand), Keio University Tokyo (Japan), Lebanese American University New York (USA), Universidad Javeriana Bogotá (Colombia), FAU Arquitectura Santiago (Chile); and a guest juror and lecturer at Harvard GSD Tokyo, University of Virginia, Bartlett School of Architecture, ETSAM, and Columbia GSAPP, among other institutions. Her works and articles have been published in MoMA Ed., Architectural Design, Damdi, El País, World Architecture magazine, Urbanism and Architecture, Arquitectura Viva, Domus web, etc.
Previously she worked as an architect at Foreign Office Architects in London (UK), Herzog & de Meuron in
Basel (Switzerland), Izaskun Chinchilla Architects in Madrid (Spain), and was a member of the editorial board of Arquitectura Viva magazine in Madrid (Spain).
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