Pre-school Centre in Sotillo. Memory
The construction of the new centre for Pre-School Education in the municipality of Sotillo de la Adrada (Avila province) is located on an independent plot of land surrounded by municipal installations and smaller ancillary buildings.
The area around the building has been subject to the building of new housing units over the past twenty years, and the materiality of the centre seeks to cut itself off from its most immediate context in order to give its young users more privacy. To do so a solid perimeter fence has been created all the way round the building: at some stages it follows the outline of the plot and at others it seeks the best route over the land. The material used (vertical wooden planks) is closely associated with the area (the valley of the River Tiétar): wood has been used here by the traditional building trade to make the characteristic rows of balconies. As well as being a boundary marker, the fence is intended to offer a connection with and speak for what were once the good features of the surrounding area, the boundary marker of an inhabited area.
Inside of this enclosure, of this soft fence, the living spaces and the spaces of light of the building are condensed, characterized by two patios and two closed spaces connected by an arm of light and glass, where this glass and baked clay become the moving forces.
The inside reveals spaces with qualities of colour bestowed by the lacquered finish of the aluminium carpentry work and the different coloured ceramic surfaces. The spaces to be passed through have been designed so that the children have their own visual relation with the spaces outside; at the same time the uppermost limits of the classrooms are marked out by hanging lamps.