Description

This is a constrained urban site measuring 36 x 120 metres of which 720 square metres comprise parking spaces. The school is in the form of a three-storey rectangular block which takes up a large part of the available site area. The walls of the school are hard up against three sides of the surrounding streets like a palazzo in urban Rome. Nevertheless the compact plan incorporates a varied range of accommodation including 20 traditional classrooms with specialist science and computer rooms, a dining area at ground floor level, a kindergarten and community room. There is a library which is articulated architecturally with walls and roof projecting beyond the lines of the urban block. It is open to the local community after school hours, which comprises many recent immigrants with a poor grasp of English; it is a symbolic statement about the importance of education, like a beacon visible to passers-by from the surrounding streets.

The perimeter block form is in local red brick with a recessed loggia to the west, playgrounds for the kindergarten on the south and a small play plaza for the main school to the north. The arrangement provides a powerful civic presence, yet with a number of architectural flourishes which add a twist to the otherwise austere form. Apart from the library picked out in shimmering white metal cladding, there is a dramatic tapering staircase tower clad in coloured geometric tiles, an important access and social meeting point within this vertically organised school. Inside the stair tower there is a sun motif in the form of a semi-circular 45 degree roof light; the back wall features a sun dial calibrated to the angle of the sun radiating from above. The motif is echoed on the external street courtyard with the axis mundi graphically set out in coloured floor tiles; according to architect Carol Ross Barney, the sundial refers to the role of the sun in Aztec culture and has become an important local landmark.

The advantages of the planning strategy are firstly that it allows a very high density with economical circulation between classrooms. Outside there is no left-over space, its perimeter edges act as secure buttresses against the outside world. Paradoxically the proximity of classroom windows and doors to the street gives it an immediacy to the local community, which is welcoming to outsiders, yet in a controlled way. The cafeteria and gymnasium are well- used community facilities as are the many adult evening classes which run in classrooms on the ground floor.

Perhaps more importantly, it is an extremely economical layout both in environmental terms and in building costs. The heavy external envelope and internalised plan form make good sense in this region which experiences extreme temperature ranges across the seasons. The drawback of the tight planning is that much of the internal circulation areas on the ground and first floors have only restricted levels of natural light. However, good artificial lighting and bright reflective finishes help to reduce this problem. Everywhere there is evidence of thoughtful pragmatic design decisions which have created a building of immense practical value both to the local school children and its disparate community of adult users.

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Originally published in: Mark Dudek, Schools and Kindergartens: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2015.