Spanish primary schoolsEuropean Building CulturesMaking ArchitectureAR1MA050MSc 1 MADDMaterialisation

Teacher:Henri van Bennekom

Student:Ruben Smits

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Table of Contents

Table of contents 2

Research 2

Introduction to Spain 3 Education system Climate Architecture Politics Religion

Colegio la salle Maravillas 4 Information Description Images Conclusion

“Thau” primary and secondary school complex 8 Information Description Images Conclusion

School for children with learning difficulties 11 Information Description Images Conclusion

10 unit primary school 14 Information Description Images Conclusion

School 5 17 Information Description Images Conclusion

Day care, kindergarten and primary school 20 Information Description Images Conclusion

Overall conclusion 24

ResearchMy research is about primary schools in Spain. So what can we tell about the design of their primary schools. What are the reasons to make design decisions like this and not another. First I will give a very brief introduc-tion to a couple of aspects that have a big influence on the design of buildings and in particular schools. Then I will discuss a couple of different primary schools in Spain and give a conclusion on these designs, and in the end I will give an overall conclusion on what I found out about primary schools in Spain in general. I arranged the schools in a chronological order in time.

On this page I put a photo of spanish mills with its landscape, which are so typically spanish. I am going to find out if primary schools have a typical form or functioning of its own. Have fun reading my report.

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Introduction to Spain

Education system

Below Higher Education the system can be seen as consisting of four levels:

* Pre-school (Educación Infantil, segundo ciclo) - 3 to 5 years old * Primary School (Educación Primaria) 6 years of school - 6 to 11 years old * Compulsory Secondary Education (Educación Secundaria Obligatoria) 4 years school - 12 to 15 years old * Post-Compulsory Schooling (Bachillerato) 2 years of school - 16 and 17 years old

Children 3 to 5 years old in Spain have the option of attending the Pre-school stage (infantil or popularly known as preescolar), which is non-compulsory and free for all students. It is regarded as an integral part of the education system with infants’ classes at almost every primary school. There are some separate nursery schools (Colegios Infantiles).

Children (whose parents chose that they should) enter pre-school (Educación Infantil) in the autumn of the calendar year in which they turn three years old. Following this pattern, the ages given here as corresponding to the different phases are the ages turned by children in the calendar year in which the academic year begins. Age ranges are inclusive: 3 to 5 years of age is 3 academic years.

Spanish students aged 6 to 15 undergo primary (colegio) and secondary school (instituto) education, which are compulsory and (like the preceding preschool from age 3) free of charge. Successful students are awarded a Secondary Education Certificate, which is necessary to enter the post-compulsory stage of Schooling (principally the Bachillerato) for their University or Vocational (Formación Profesional) Studies. Once students have finished their Bachillerato, they can take their University Entrance Exam (Pruebas de Acceso a la Universidad, popularly called Selectividad) which differs greatly from region to region. The compulsory stage of secondary education is normally referred to by its initials: ESO (Educación Secundaria Obligatoria).

Climate

According to the Köppen climate classification, the climate in Spain is essentially mediterranean.Peninsular Spain mostly experiences a Mediterranean climate. But to a lesser extent, there are two other climate regions: the Oceanic climate and the Semiarid climate. Highland areas have a mountainous climate, and some overseas areas have a humid subtropical climate.

Architecture

Spanish architecture refers to architecture carried out during any era in what is now modern-day Spain, and by Spanish architects worldwide. The term includes buildings within the current geographical limits of Spain before this name was given to those territories, whether they were called Hispania, Al-Andalus, or were formed of several Christian kingdoms.

Due to its historical and geographical diversity, Spanish architecture has drawn from a host of influences. An important provincial city founded by the Romans and with an extensive Roman era infrastructure, Córdoba became the cultural capital, including fine Arabic style architecture, during the time of the Islamic Umayyad dynasty.[144] Later Arab style architecture continued to be developed under successive Islamic dynasties, ending with the Nasrid, which built its famed palace complex in Granada.

Simultaneously, the Christian kingdoms gradually emerged and developed their own styles; developing a pre-Romanesque style when for a while isolated from contemporary mainstream European architectural influences during the earlier Middle Ages, they later integrated the Romanesque and Gothic streams. There was then an extraordinary flowering of the gothic style that resulted in numerous instances being built throughout the entire territory. The Mudéjar style, from the 12th to 17th centuries, was developed by introducing Arab style motifs, patterns and elements into European architecture.

The arrival of Modernism in the academic arena produced much of the architecture of the 20th century. An influential style centered in Barcelona, known as modernisme, produced a number of important architects, of which Gaudí is one. The International style was led by groups like GATEPAC. Spain is currently experiencing a revolution in contemporary architecture and Spanish architects like Rafael Moneo, Santiago Calatrava, Ricardo Bofill as well as many others have gained worldwide renown.

Politics

The politics of Spain take place in the framework of a parliamentary representative democratic constitutional monarchy, whereby the Monarch is the Head of State and the President of the Government is the head of government in a multi-party system. Executive power is vested in the government. Central legislative power is vested in the two chambers of parliament. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.

Religion

Roman Catholicism is the largest denomination of Christianity present in the country by far. According to a October 2010 study by the Spanish Center of Sociological Research about 73% of Spaniards self-identify as Catholics, 2.2% other faith, and about 22% identify with no religion.[1] Most Spaniards do not participate regularly in religious worship. This same study shows that of the Spaniards who identify themselves as religious, 56% goes to mass few times a year, 17% go to mass many times a year (varias veces al año), 9% some time per month and 15% every Sunday or multiple times per week.[2] Although a majority of Spaniards are Catholics, most, especially those of the younger generation, ignore the Church’s conservative moral doctrines on issues such as pre-marital sex, sexual orientation or contraception.[3][4][5][6] The total number of parish priests has shrunk from 24,300 in 1975 to 19,307 in 2005. Nuns also dropped 6.9% to 54,160 in the period 2000-2005.[7]

sources: * http://www.wikipedia.org

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Colegio la salle Maravillas1.1 name of building: Colegio la salle Maravillas

1.2 place, country: Calle de Joaquin Costa, Madrid, Spain

1.3 name of architect: Alejandro de la Sota

1.4 years design and construction: 1960 - 1963.

1.5 client: Colegio la salle Maravillas

1.6 costs: x

1.7 size: x

1.8 main consultants: Structure: Eusebio Rojas Marcos

1.9 main materials: Steel and masonry

2 description:

A strong existing ground slope, retaining walls and mass concrete steps. The difference in height between the street facade and the upper yard is 12 meters. The access is at the lower part from the street and in the upper part from the courtyard. The basement is used as the gym, the locker room and the training field hockey, The ground floor is for the actual gymnasium and there is a room for gymnastics teachers. The first and the second floor is for former alumnus and psychotechnology. Upstairs is for the museum of natural sciences, physics, conference rooms, the play games, music and lecture, etc. The yard on top of the building is the playground for the children of the school.

The structure in the basement has been constructed out of concrete, the rest of the building out of iron. In the hall, pillars of 8 meters height, six meters apart from each other, support a beam-bridge of 20 meters span. Forged steel joists and Viroterm, absorbing the noise in the lower part of the beams used as floor of the upper floors and roof of the gym. Elastic wood Mourning on the court. The architect tried to get a room full of humanity, coldly gymnastic neutralizer, warm materials in color and substance, this was the main architectural environmental concern.

1962. This building seemed to be designed by itself. Due to the concern over issues such as urban problems, a difficult site, and a low budget, the focus on a specific Architecture was diminished. In order to locate the gymnasium at the required height, the basement was used, the classrooms are leveled with the Gym’s roof, and the terrace, used as a playground, is leveled with the school. Different effects are achieved inside the gymnasium and the classrooms through the choice of particular structures. The outer bay windows give the façade an urban scale. The building is surrounded by an outer protective fence, which harmonizes with the whole and also acts as a façade.

3 conclusion:

This is a private school which holds infant classes, primary school classes, secondary school classes and bachelors, so this is a school where children can stay until they are 18 years old. This school was built in 1941 and contains 9000 squared meters, but the church was built earlier. The school is situated in the centre of Madrid, with on the northern side a residential area and on the southern side one of the biggest avenues to enter the city center of Madrid, calle de Joaquin Costa. This avenue is 8 meters lower than the height of the residential area, the school was built on this platter. The middle volume of this platter originally was a church

with on the left side the girls school and on the right side the boys school. Nowadays this is a mixed school with the aula and other public functions in the former church. The eastern patio is now meant for the primary school and the western patio for the secondary school and the bachelors. In the history of Spain, many schools belonged to the church. The intervention of Alejandro de la Sota is below the platter. The school needed an indoor gymnasium and there was some space left to build, so the school gave the architect the remaining space and he made a marvellous intervention in this space. He made with relatively little space a swimming pool on the lower floor, a gymnasium on the middle floor, three classrooms on the upper floor and on top of this a large playground. Alejandro de la Sota designed the southern facade as a continuing wall, but he used the windows to get natural sunlight into the building, but you can’t look out of this.The main entrance of the school is on the side of the residential area, to the former church, but there is a side entrance at the side of the big avenue, so they can close the school during the weekends, while they can still use the gymnasium. The images and pictures below are actually only about this little part of the school, but I found it so amazing that I wanted to show this.

4 sources: * Contemporary Spanish Architecture, an eclectic panorama – Kenneth Frampton – July 1986, New York * Alejandro de la Sota, Arquitecto – Alejandro de la Sota – 1989, Madrid

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“Thau” primary and secondary school complex1.1 name of building: “Thau” primary and secondary school complex.

1.2 place, country: Esplugues Road, Barcelona

1.3 name of architect: Josep Martorell, Oriol Bohigas, David Mackay (MBM)

1.4 years design and construction: Design: 1972 – 1973. Construction: 1974 – 1975.

1.5 client: x

1.6 costs: x

1.7 size: x

1.8 main consultants: x

1.9 main materials: Plaster

2 description:

This is the structure that set down the guidelines for the MBM’s studio’s dilatory experience in the field of school architecture. At first, the rational line of thinking – the lineal deployment of classrooms along access corridors – characterized their earliest designs in this field. From there, they evolved towards propositions more in line with Anglo-Saxon emphasis on central floors. For the time being, this building is as far as they have been able to take them. The two different educational phases each have their independent volumes. In deploying the classroom areas, the designers have sought the most level sections of the plot and given them an orientation to the Southeast and Southwest. The difference between levels – approximately six meters – is resolved by step-like platforms. Passageways intersecting with stairways help to relate one volume to the other and keep access at the natural level of the terrain.

The usual plan of organization for schools, calling for multiple use of spaces and honeycomb arrangements to absorb traffic and provide access to the classrooms, here acquires a greater compactness. It has even been necessary to open a patio in the primary area. Thus, their concern for volumetric rotundity (easy to recognize in the autonomous arrangement and shapes of accesses and classrooms) and a penchant for structural systemization set this building apart from its immediate predecessors at St. Jordi de Pineda and Garbí de Esplugues. Even so, one can perceive a certain line of continuity in the persistence of a brutalist sensibility. The concrete block of the interiors, their way of drawing attention the access stairways by large glassed-in aluminium parameters, the reticular lines of the showy rosettes, and the well worked-out solution to the exterior window shutters all attest to the architect’s concern for detail and for the expressive potential of materials. No longer tied to the tradition of mere craftsmanship, this latter aspect will soon be recognized as a constant trademark of this studio in recent years. In the meantime, they continue striving for that ever-elusive synthesis between their new figurative proposals and the persistence of long-standing architectural sensibilities.

3 conclusion:

This is a private primary and secondary school on the edge of the city of Barcelona. In the original drawings the primary school is fysically unrelated to the secondary school, but if we look to the building on google maps for example, we can see that the school has added an airbridge between the two buildings. The two buildings differ six meters in height on the plot because of the start of the hills on the edge of the city. The stairs on the playground (to be able to reach the other building from the one building) are in the form of a slice

of an arena. Visually the primary and the secondary school are connected in a couple of ways. I will point them out in the next few sentences. The materialisation and the detailing of both buildings is the same, on the south-eastern and the south-western side of the building the architect used especially plaster for the facades, while he used especially glass on the north-western and north-eastern side of the building. The organization of both the primary school as the secondary school is based on the classrooms in an L-shape form oriented to the south-west and south-east. The left-space of that L-shape is used for all other functions such as the aula and teacher rooms. So all classrooms are oriented to the south, therefore they use outer sunblinds to keep the sun out of the building. These sunblinds determines the appearence of the facades pretty dramatically. It looks very playful, because every teacher can determine theirselves whether they want to have their sunblinds opened or whether they want to have them closed. The entrance of the school is at the northern playground, the entrance is showed by letting the glass facades disappear and an entrance door appears.

4 sources: * Arquitectura Espanola contemporanea – Eduard Bru & José Luis Mateo – September 1984, Barcelona

Northwestern and Northeastern facades

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Ground floor primary school

South-western and South-eastern facades

South-western and South-eastern facades

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First floor primary school Second floor primary school, ground floor secondary school

First floor secondary school Second floor secondary school

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School for children with learning difficulties1.1 name of building: School for children with learning difficulties

1.2 place, country: Palau de Plegamans, Barcelona, Spain

1.3 name of architect: Eduard Bru, J. Bellmunt, G. Tarragó

1.4 years design and construction: years: 1984- 1986

1.5 client: Generalitat de Catalunya, Conselleria de Justícia (parlement of Catalonia, ministry of justice

1.6 costs: x

1.7 size: x

1.8 main consultants: Structural consultants: Antoni Balagué, Robert Brufau Collaborators: Jaume Arbona, Manel Ferrer, J.M. Buxó, Rosa Bassols

1.9 main materials: Masonry

2 description:

The school for children with learning difficulties in Palau de Plegamans is a response to the wish of the Generalitat de Catalunya’s Conselleria de Justicia to construct centres adapted to current pedagogical criteria, making the best possible use of the potential of the various sites.

We have laid out the school in separate pavilions. One of these will accommodate children being kept under observation: this is the building with a courtyard, which will allow the children, where appropriate, access to a playground without having to go out into the general area. Two other pavilions will each receive two groups of five children. The building by the entrance houses administration and direction. At the other end of the site, sheltering between two planes of the perimeter wall and looking onto a vegetable garden, is a farm with its own courtyard, general workshop and an irrigation reservoir for water collected from the roofs.

The site itself was, without doubt, the main motive force in the design of this project. The clearing in the pine wood, in which the project is situated, has certain characteristics of its own: it belongs to the system of slopes and summits which form the transition between Granera and the central Vallés a system marked by rivers and seasonal water courses (such as the Seca or the neighbouring Riera de Caldes, the most important) on the lower ground and such notable features as the nearby Castell de Plegamans, Can Falguera, etc.

Our site is located on one of the slopes with a sustained north-south gradient with a more or less constant west to east inclination up to the summit, some ten meters from the eastern boundary of the plot, which is on the other side of the hill. The woods bound the site on every side except to the north, where the site opens out, following the slope of the hill, to offer views of the farmhouses, especially Can Torrent, dotted around the area.

3 conclusion:

This school is situated in a village 30 km. to the north of Barcelona. The different pavilions are all one storey high and have pitched roofs. The pavilions are all built up by masonry, glass and roofing tiles. With this arrangement of pavillions on a slope they kind of embrace a playground for the children. This design consists of 5 pavilions, which all have another function. Light comes into the building through windows in the facade,

but also through the spare space between the two sides of the pitched roofs. The architect uses these pitched roofs for getting more shadow in the outer corridor (you have to use the outer corridor when you want to reach another pavilion) and to be able to play with rooflighting. I think it’s pretty clear that this isn’t a regular school. This is a school for children with learning dificulties; They use a courtyard in the upper pavillion to keep an eye on the children who are playing outside. But this courtyard is only for specific children, other children have a lot of playgrounds to discover in this design.

4 sources: * Spanish contemporary architecture, the eighties – Gustavo Gili – 1990, Barcelona

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10 Unit primary school1.1 name of building: 10 unit primary school

1.2 place, country: Masquefa, Barcelona, Spain

1.3 name of architect: Esteve Bonell, Josep Ma. Gil

1.4 years design and construction: 1985 – 1988

1.5 client: Generalitat de Catalunya, Conselleria d’Ensenyament (parlement of Catalonia, ministry of education)

1.6 costs: x

1.7 size: x

1.8 main consultants: Structural consultants: Robert Brufau Collaborators: Enrique Rego Martul, Desirée Mas Rigal, Alberto Daniel

1.9 main materials: Masonry and natural stone

2 description:

The building is developed over two floors, with an entrance hall which separates the classroom and administrative area from the area comprising the dining room, multi-purpose hall, kitchen and janitor’s residence.

The area of the entrance hall is provided with two separate entrances, one at street level giving into the school’s main vestibule and the other connecting with the upper floor, allowing separate access to the janitor’s apartment and the library, which can therefore be used out of school hours.

The plan has been worked out on the basis of a module of two classrooms, with sanitary services, and with ventilation and illumination by means of a courtyard; the entrance corridor widens to form a kind of gallery looking out to the exterior, creating a space which is related to and supportive of the classroom space.

The corridor between the classrooms on the ground floor affords direct access to the playground, while the connection with the upper corridor is by way of two sets of stairs, one at either end.

3 conclusion:

This primary school lies in the centre of the village of Masquefa, about 40 km. inland from Barcelona. The school has a rectangular form parallel to the street. The main materials the architect used are masonry and natural stone for the more representative parts like the entrance. The school has two entrances, because the janitor lives in the school and he needs a different entrance to be able to close the school, but the entrances are above eachother. The classrooms have their direction to the east. Next to every classroom there is an inner courtyard to derive the light and ventilation from, one classroom next to the other gives the other classroom a bit of shadow. The facade on the streetside (east) looks really closed, but there is a bit of light coming in to the vertical openings. The inner facade (west) is a bit more opened and has windows and doors from the inside corridor to the outside playground.

4 sources: * Spanish contemporary architecture, the eighties – Gustavo Gili – 1990, Barcelona

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Collegi Horta Mayor1.1 name of building: Collegi Horta Mayor

1.2 place, country: Carrer Isabel la Católica, Alcoy, Spain

1.3 name of architect: J. Soriano Rams, G. Almazán

1.4 years design and construction: 1994

1.5 client: Board of the collegi Horta Mayor

1.6 costs: 262.055.952 Pesetas

1.7 size: x

1.8 main consultants: Collaborators: G. Perpinho 1.9 main materials: Concrete, Plaster

2 description:

The solution adopted is influenced by the situation of the existing buildings and by the topography of the plot; the functional and natural conditions such as orientation, sunning, etc.. The task for this building was to make one building out of all existing building volumes to have a unitary and unifying concept, to have a clear defined main entrance from which all volumes distribute, which gives unequivocal answer to the city as manifested through a facade of clear commitment to urban spaces.

The new building “runs” parallel to the Calle Isabel La Católica and “tie” the two existing classroom buildings, creating a pattern of movement within the school “comb” with hallways and classrooms on one side to another. The offices of the new building will have an eastern orientation, while the existing classrooms face south.

The formal composition of the building is conditioned by the topography and the maintenance of the existing buildings, and it will differentiate the various body components and the different uses that it is given.The exterior development is organized through trays which are placed for the sports, games, infant, primary recreation, etc. There are 6 infant class rooms and 12 classrooms for primary education.

3 conclusion:

Two building volumes of two storeys high of the Horta Mayor colegio already existed. The architects task was to make an addition to this school. He joined these two classroom volumes together with an addition of a rectangular form (three storeys high) parallel to the calle Isabel La Católica. In this building he put some classrooms more, but also some teacher rooms. This has to serve as a protective wall against the road, like we have seen in colegio Maravillas. He made another addition as a continuation of the already existing northen classroom volume. This building volume is only one storey high, but has the same appearance as the two existing classrooms, because of the same materialisation and the same pitched roof system. The existing buildings use the pitched roofs for natural light, like the school for children with learning dificulties does. The school has a main entrance now at the calle Isabel La Católica. That was really important for the board of the school. I think this was a beautiful addition to the already existing school because the playground is embraced by building volumes now (we’ve seen it before in another school). The classrooms (already existing and new) have their orientation to the south, while the corridor has the orientation to the north.

4 sources: * Arquitectura escolar pública – comunitat valenciana – obres I projectes 1985 hasta 1995 – march 1995, Valencia

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long sides of the classrooms. We’ve seen this before in the 10 unit primary school, but this building is totally oriented south, and it’s used as a playground, so I think it’s much stronger in this building. The inner corridor forms the buffer between the classrooms and the street. This corridor is very broad, because all the stairs are integrated in the corridor on the northern facade side. Both the facades are really closed concrete facades, but on the southern playground facade the architect used a lot of depth using these courtyards, so it looks less close, because of all these openings which in the end will lead again to concrete. On the northern street facade the architect “lifted” the ground floor, so he was able to differentiate the ground floor facade from the upper facades, he enabled the northern light to come in. I think the facades of this building are really beautiful, because the architect uses the sunlight (northern or southern) to make appearance of the concrete darker or brighter. The school has one playground for the children and a playfield on the other side of the gymnasium. This playfield is too close to the street, so that’s why the playfield is fenced. I know this school hasn’t been built between the years 1950 and 2000, but I wanted to mention this building anyway, because more than 50 % of our group came with this school and I wanted to know why that was.

4 sources: * http://www.archdaily.com

Day care, kindergarten and primary school1.1 name of building: Day care, kindergarten and primary school

1.2 place, country: Granollers, spain

1.3 name of architect: Jordi Badia

1.4 years design and construction: 2003 – 2006

1.5 client: GISA, Gestió d’infraestructures S.A. Departament d’Ensenyament

1.6 costs: x

1.7 size: x

1.8 main consultants: Collaborators: Jordi Framis, Daniel Guerra, Marcos Catalán, Sergi Serrat Structure: Eduard Doce Technical architect: INYPSA. Antonio Leciñena, Joan Vilanova Measures and budget: Francesc Xairó Services: Consulting Lluís Duart

1.9 main materials: Concrete

2 description:

This elementary school is divided into two parts: The classrooms on one level and a lower section housing the cafeteria and the Gym.

It was built in two stages so that classes could proceed in the old building, which is on the same site. In the first phase the classrooms were built on the ground floor and on two upper floors, aligned to one of the corridors. The dining hall and the gym were built in the second phase, when the pupils had moved to the new classrooms.

The classrooms are on a strip, aligned to the street, between common walls. This strip is closed to the street and receives natural light through a series of patios, forming 3-storey-high empty volumes, used then as playgrounds for the children.

A linear staircase connects the three floors, constructing an interior focal point and converting the three floors into a single volume which receives light filtered through a series of alternate vertical openings.

The façade emphasizes the building’s opacity, with only the street-level entrance of kindergarten marking a difference, which then makes the pavement leading to the entrance wider.

The whole building is built from white concrete with continuous vertical joint, and a series of lattice windows also in concrete suggest transparency between the work rooms and the corridors.

3 conclusion:

This primary school is situated in a village 25 km. inland from Barcelona, called Granollers. The school consists out of two building volumes; the classroom volume of three storeys high and the dining and gym voluem of one storey. The classrooms are oriented to the south and have patios or inner courtyards on both

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Overall conclusionWhat did I find out about designs of primary schools in Spain? I analysed six primary school buildings in Spain between 1960 and 2003 and I think I saw some similarities in different plans of different designers. I will discuss with every theme I thought was typical first my observations and then I’ll try to make a conclusion out of these observations.

Southern orientation of classrooms

Four of the six schools I’ve analysed have their classrooms oriented on the south. I think that’s really weird, because classrooms are the most important part of the school, like the dwellings are the most important part for housing. Do the architects want direct sunlight into the building or did they do this for specific other reasons? Spain doesn’t love the sun like we do in Holland, they often see the sun as a threat. So what is the advantage of having the classrooms on the south and the corridor on the north?

The colegio la salle Maravillas has its three classrooms in the gymnasium oriented on the southern facade, but just on the spots that there are classrooms behind the southern facade the architect closes the facade, so it won’t get direct sunlight into these classrooms. These closed parts give the differentiation in the southern facade directly on the big avenue. The architect didn’t have a choice for the orientation, because there was only one side of the site that had a light source, the southern. And he used this direct light with his intervention in an indirect way.

The Thau primary and secondary school complex has its classrooms in an L-shape embracing an inner space for all other functions. This L shape is with its angular point of the L oriented to the south. These classrooms use outer sunblinds to keep the sun away. This gives the playful appearance of the south-eastern and south-western facades. I think we can conclude that this school complex has chosen for the advantages of an open facade for the whole day on the southeast and southwest (light) and took care of the disadvantages by placing outer sunblinds to leave the heat out.

The collegi Horta Mayor has the classrooms of its two already existing buildings and of one new building on the south, it keeps the sun away by having a little overhang with its pitched roofs and by using inner sunblinds. The new building keeps the sun out a little bit smarter, the rooms that don’t want light have a setback of 1 or 2 meters, so the roof protects these rooms. The existing school really chose for this orientation, because the former building would be exactly the same as it would be the other way around; corridor south, classrooms north. I think the architect did this to get bright classrooms, to keep the children active. I think this is the reason, because the architect plays with lighting in the pitched roof as well.

The primary school without a name in Granollers has its classrooms oriented on the south, but in this building it is hard to say if he wanted this, because he closes the southern facade totally with concrete and light falls in from both long sides of the classrooms, the courtyards. This architect has chosen for the classrooms oriented on the south because he wanted this inner organization rather than the orientation on the south, and that’s why he blocked the whole southern facade. But he found a great solution for this problem I think.

We’ve seen that every school (I’ve researched) that has a north-south orientation rather than an east-west orientation has its classrooms oriented to the south. This cannot be coincidence, but I tried to get to know why they made this decision in their designs. But actually all designs have different basic principles, so it’s hard to give one answer on this question, but I can give more reasons why they orient their classrooms to the south. The architect can find it important that the classroom is really bright, so that the children keep active, so it uses the bright direct sunlight for this. The architect has no choice, because there is just one opening at the site, you have to let some natural light into your building. Or the architect thinks its really important to have the classrooms on the southern facade for the sake of the inner organization and the sound.

Courtyards

Three of the six designs of primary schools in Spain I’ve analysed use one or more courtyards, I think that is much, so I’m going to find out what the reasons for the architects are to use this.

The school for children with learning difficulties has one courtyard in the northern pavilion. This is designed because the teachers have to hold an eye on these children, while they are playing outside. This doesn’t count for all children in this school, but just for the class that’s in the northern pavilion. So here the reason is pretty clear.

The ten unit primary school has modules of two classrooms attached to eachother. Between two modules of two classrooms lies a courtyard on the streetside where the classrooms derive their light and ventilation from, one classroom next to the other gives the other classroom a bit of shadow, because the strip of classrooms are all oriented to the east. The reason I think why he designed these courtyards, is that he didn’t want sunlight to blind the children from the front. So now the sunlight comes from the right or left, which is better.

The primary school in Granollers has courtyards between every single classroom. The architect closed the southern facade totally, so he needed an intervention to let natural light come into the classrooms, so he found the courtyards that provide light on both the long sides of the classrooms. These courtyards also function as playground. I think this is a great use of a courtyard, and the reasons he designed this are clear.

Courtyards are used for multiple reasons. On the one hand it can be used to keep an eye on the children that are playing outside, on the other hand courtyards can be used as a playground or they can be used as a way of letting natural light in if you don’t want the sun to blind the children.

Embraced playgrounds

In all (except 10 unit primary school) projects I’ve researched I experienced that the buildings and playgrounds are arranged in a certain way. The building volumes of primary schools in Spain try to ‘embrace’ the playground of the children. I think I don’t have to explain this on every project, because it’s quite obvious I think, but I wanted to mention this as one of the findings. I think this has to do with the protecting culture of Spain. We can see this protection as well in the courtyard in the other school.

pitched roofs with rooflight

Two of the buildings I’ve analysed have pitched roofs with rooflights. Both schools have vertical windows in the roof (check images) but the school for children with learning difficulties has these roof windows with an eastern orientation and the Collegi Horta Mayor has these roof windows with a northern orientation. What is becoming really clear is that natural lighting is a really big issue in Spain with certain rules and certain qualities in schools. What the architects want to achieve with this solution is more diffuse and natural light into the classroom.

During my research I acquired some knowledge on the history of schools in Spain, I’ll mention some important information when we are talking about Spanish primary schools.

A century ago schools belonged to the catholic church, that’s what you see in the Maravillas school. Boys and girls were fysically divided at school (for example in the Maravillas they were divided by the church itself).

When I searched for primary schools in Spain I found a lot of combined schools of primary AND secondary schools (for example Thau school complex and Maravillas). I didn’t know why this was combined so often, but during my research I solved it; There are a lot of private schools in Spain and private schools often have a continuing program of infantery school, primary school, secondary school and last but not least the bachelors.