-
Architects: ELE Arkitektura
- Area: 2000 m²
- Year: 2023
-
Photographs:Aitor Estevez Olaizola
-
Lead Architects: Eduardo Landia Ormaetxea, Eloi Landia Ormaetxea
Geometric landscapes. According to Irigaray, "Desire is not simply a sexual or materialistic impulse, but a deep and complex motivation that is rooted in relationships with ourselves, with others, and with the world around us." This is precisely what the intervention at San Antonio school is about. The work as a whole gives responsibility to the user so that, in their gathering, in their activity, in their play, in their desire, there is space for the desire of others. The effect is a paradoxical strategy in which individual and abstract space becomes valuable when shared, in which the cave is only suggestive because someone is climbing the mountain.
The intervention includes the renovation of an exterior courtyard, an interior cloister, and the modernization of the previous entrance facade to the school. Through pure geometric forms, the aim is to unify the 3 compositions.
The original facade was the longitudinal succession of several buildings constructed in different periods, with significant variations in composition and height. The intervention seeks to create a uniform and unitary composition of the entire front through liberation from all ornamentation. The perceptual visual dialogue between the street and interior space seeks to blur the limits of the work by connecting it with its surroundings. The intervention gives the whole a recognizable and contemporary image.
The outdoor play area seeks to emphasize the permeability found in the facade. This is achieved through an appreciative visual connection with the exterior, using a metal mesh structure to shape the entire composition of the place.
On one hand, and using the metal mesh as a support, a series of geometric shapes, adapted to the scale of the users and geometrically recognizable, are arranged orthogonally where multiple games and circuits seem to emerge from them. This element manages to reprogram a blind partition wall about 80 meters long that separates the neighboring property from the school.
On the other hand, as a result of this metal enclosure and as we move towards the end of the courtyard, we enter a series of platforms. These wooden supports aim to evoke a geometrization of nature, representing different well-known landscapes and adapting to their use on a scale.
In the cloister, a semi-closed space is created that expands the potentially usable covered area throughout the year. An almost ethereal ETFE cover is proposed, allowing for maximum use of natural light. Following the same geometric pattern as in the rest of the intervention, a new circular geometry is overlaid on the rectangular space of the original cloister, effectively doubling the available covered space.
