Primary School in Sanchidrian. Memory
The location area are territories surrounding the Moraña town of Sanchidrián, flat pieces of land lying in a line, sketched upon by some piles of bales of straw left over from the summer, which have in some cases become a permanent part of the landscape; they have blended into the landscape, and the golden tones have turned into matte greys to be confused with the leaden autumn sky.
The proposed solution would benefit most from being south-facing, this being the best with regard to sunshine and natural heating of the spaces, given that we are in a territory with extremes of cold, and that the hottest weeks are concentrated in the months of July and August (periods when there is no school activity).
The building sits in the north-eastern zone of the plot, creating a central layout spine from which two wings of classrooms spread out to the west, and another two bodies of building to the east (the multi-purpose room and administration). Between the parts created, all one storey high, playgrounds open up, spaces for dialogue between the different parts of the building, games outside and games inside, static games and dynamic games, transparency and translucency.
The areas of the classroom are intended as spaces open to natural light and to the playgrounds, as an extension of the ludic activities of the outside, the classrooms as parts in the daily play of the children, with tilted single-gabled roofs which open up in height towards the outside, and which in turn take over the line of the Castilian landscape that the plot enjoys. The light which reaches the classrooms is filtered through pieces of glass of different degrees of translucence, and sets of roller blinds.
In terms of construction, the building uses principally glass and wood as cladding materials. The opaque faces are clothed in a façade which is ventilated with a finish of autoclaved pinewood boards; in some areas these boards have been part of the forming of the concrete in situ, giving walls which are frozen in time, walls previous to the walls themselves. The rest of the surfaces use strained glass pieces, translucent glass pieces, and transparent glass pieces. The roof is made of sheets of zinc. As the school years pass by, the building will take on the different leaden tones to be found in the landscape.