High School. Memory
The building is located in an enlarging area of the city of Leon, where there are new constructions and big green areas
Facing the need of enlarging the educational facilities of the secondary education school, a building characterized by its inside symmetry thanks to a central patio, the proposal of enlargement wants to open this kind of facilities to the nearest city context. In this case, the existence of a new park in the south and the riverbanks of the river Bernesga in the west, together with pilgrims’ road to Santiago de Compostela, which is perpendicular to the riverbaks, have stated the rules to design not only the new building but also the necessary mechanism to catch the areas of great value that surround the educational area
The solution proposed takes hold of the green area, and also makes the old building take part of it by means of bands of different entity, according to their uses and incidences: hard, semi-hard, or tamed pavements, stay areas, covered areas of recess, of parking, green areas enlarged with the public park, facilities, sport…
On the other hand, the building on the ground floor is also diaphanous on the perpendicular axis, in the east-west one, visualizing and capturing from end to end the riverbak of the Bernesga river, the pilgrims’ road to Santiago de Compostela, and the neighbourhood.
The new building is articulated on a generating ground floor as a conceptual, formal and constructive basis. This is shaped like a great parallel band to the park, in which full and empty areas appeared, both in its own floor and its vertical axis. The full areas correspond to three perpendicular pieces intersectional to the main one that expand to the north with different lengths, and are meant to be of common use.
The three pieces are shaped in a similar way and are parallel to the bands, leaving among them some communication zones, which allow the sight and references to the park and which are closed in three sides, opening completely the forth one to the outside area, to the north lights, taking advantages of its suitability because of its homogeneous and pleasant lights.
There are two floors over the main one, just for teaching use, whose access is by means of two stairways and one lift. These two levels give the most particular image of the building, in the sense that they try to show the dynamism and the openness that the educational uses should achieve.
On the south façade, a “collage” is seen as a frontal image of the building towards the park, towards the city of Leon, towards the pilgrims’ road to Santiago de Compostela. This canvas modifies its densities as we come closer to the building, because of the different shapes in the placement of the tramex lattices that cover it.
The mobility of the slatted shutter as an element of protection from the sunlight in the classrooms also helps the dynamism of this elevation, in which we want to represent the spirit of the inside light of the building. On the north elevation, the game takes place by the rotundity of the solid wooden volumes which come out from the transparent inside canvas.
The empty and full spaces impregnate in a seriation the whole volumetry of the house, varying from the widest spaces in the daytime areas to the minuscule and playful hollows of the night-time areas.
The materiality of these ideas has been achieved by setting together load-bearing rendered walls typical of the zone with surfaces of glass, using natural anodized aluminium and wood as the uniting threads.