Studio Banana TV interviews Picado-de Blas, authors of the soft-edged nursery school in Arganda del Rey, Madrid.
Nursery school for 0-3 year olds in Arganda del Rey
This project invited us to reflect on the first months of life of a baby.
The inhabitants of primitive dwellings such as castros (hill forts), huts, igloos or Indian tents intuitively solved the problem of achieving the maximum space with the least possible materials by building their houses with a circular floor plan. The house is the mother, and the comfort of “maternal” seclusion is an enclosure with a single opening to the outside to let in “the light”.
All this we attempted to transfer to the project, and even more so when we noticed that children always tend to play in a circle (ring around the roses, musical chairs, jacks …); at those ages all feel they are equals. Linear orderings of persons are usually imposed by discipline, the natural impulse is to form a “compact herd”. When children play alone they tend to surround themselves with a circle of toys that are within reach of their hands. This circular arrangement together with the need to keep a watch on what is going on outside of your “cave” led to making a single large opening to the outside in each cell.
The circular shape can be watched from any point on the perimeter. After concluding that the primitive circular shape was appropriate for this project, we thought about how it could be combined and interrelated to adapt to the different situations in the program.
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What in primitive settlements was the urban space, was here proposed as the space of circulations and interrelations. The central covered space works in the same way, allowing the different openings between circles to illuminate the interior in a sequential manner. This central spine, without a defined form, is the part that connects the different classrooms and services that enable the school to function. It is the link between the rooms and also determines the final appearance of the building. The dynamic central space is contrasted with the static space of the circular cells; this sensation is reinforced by the use of different materials and textures, so that the children, whether they go out to the playground or the central passageway, understand that this is a place “without protection”.
The feeling of protection is closely linked to fear. The adventure of the unknown should be discovered by them outside of their “huts”; inside them they will be taught to think, learn what it is to play.
The regulatory grid of the cells
The size of the standard classroom set out in the program requires a room with a radius of four meters. This dimension is suitable for the rest of services, so all cylinders are the same size, providing a simply construction logic.
After exploring various geometric combinations, we proposed a grid layout of tangential circles in which each line was at set right angles to the next leaving separations between alternate circles for light passageways. This layout is activated according to an internal order and forms the standard cell. This was double, since the program indicates that services should be shared by every two classrooms of 0-1, 1-2, and 2-3 year olds. These “pairs of circles” are arranged on this underlying layout to the southeast and leave the services in the northern part. This grid facilitates both the interior distribution of the rooms and the setting out in the construction process.
Depending on the orientation, a specific circle in the grid is activated. The different circles thus activated are arranged along the outer perimeter or overlapped to generate a suitable interior intersection.
Coming and going
The marquee of the main entrance is placed in a location where the light enters part of the threshold; it is both an entrance and a waiting area. One enters toward the morning light and exits toward the evening light. This waiting area serves as a transition area between the central spine and the outside. The steel in the center of this ring casts shadows and colors in the entranceway, softening the transition.
Stimulating
Color and textures are one of the most fascinating topics in a nursery school.
The sensation of being in an outside space when moving through the central interstitial space is produced on confronting the convexity of the cylinder, which was premeditatedly left in concrete. It never loses its cellular status, but rather constantly maintains the “soft” and gentle state of the sinuous movement that runs across the serene white horizontal plane.
The neutrality of this central space, absorbent and luminous, is matched with stimuli from the perimetral playgrounds to the north which always frame scenery containing plants and trees.
The cylinders of the teachers, management, dressing rooms and theater have skylights cut into their interior walls that cause the space to dilate freely, provoking different sensations.
However, the classrooms are cylinders of color, with varied lights and textures on all their surfaces. There will be small skylights, curtains, floor mats, mirrors, colored glass, rubber wash basins and other compulsory furniture, which will be integrated as islands. Doors split at a height of 1.15 meters were designed so that the upper half could be opened for visual surveillance of the children and ventilation.
The central bubble shared by two classrooms is a large polycarbonate lamp. This point is the diaper changing station, bottle feeding area, toilets, etc., which, intersected by the classrooms, acts as a control “cabin” .
The playground is proposed as an artificial landscape of textures enclosed by a textile fence that collects the shadows of the children and nearby trees. Its intermittent condition softens the permeable and horizontal white enclosure, and the level difference in the terrain is resolved by a horizontal balcony towards the eastern horizon of Arganda. This skin is the enclosure, fragile and serial, laid out on a regular grid, which watches over the urban presence and filters with sufficient permeability the volumes of this nursery school.
