SCHOOL "ANGLES" : Converging/Diverging school places

University of Patras, School of Engineering, Department of Architecture, Patras

Project idea

A Primary school constitutes the first public place children are called to live in and socialize by sharing knowledge and play. A combination of Montessori and Finnish educational systems is adopted a most suitable to enhance a diversity of knowledge domains inclusive of versatile practical activities instead of passive learning.
The central Idea and design concept is the spatial expression of this multi faceted educational view in the organization of a fluid, multifunctional school space that offers in an array of different scales from micro places to common yards and transitions from intimate and personal space to places of collective activities. This design principle informs and permeates all space from the interior of the classroom unit to the articulation of the school yard as a graded expanding/contracting mechanism that creates a succession of active vital spaces for play and learning activities.

Project description

This idea of an expansive/contracting spatial mechanism is best suited to fit in the triangular shape of the plot, which is thus best valorized. An acute angular space is given to junior students as a most intimate and personal space which does not fail to partake to gradually larger and more collective areas of the school yard.
The power of the triangular plot shape is manifested by the creation of a thick but malleable perimeter wall made by rammed earth, that insulates acoustically the school yard from the traffic of the city, differentiates its presence in the urban space as a soft shell, and mainly provides auxiliary space to schoolrooms while offered as an interactive wall for a diversity of uses.
The classroom is a multi-central space consisting of two square shaped nuclei, a bigger collective and a smaller personal one that leads upstairs to an intimate ‘bubble’. The two nuclei are mediated, and connected, by a fluid intermediate space for transitional activities that leads out of the classroom to the main schoolyard or an intimate back garden.
The school yard is organized as a fluid space that gradually, and within the sides of the plot angle, expands and contracts in following the succession of the classrooms and constituting their extension. A raised wooden deck hangs over the schoolyard and provides access to second floor classrooms, labs and administration forming a loop that crosses over the pedestrian walkway and provides access to a multipurpose hall, a library and a refectory that are shared with the adjacent schools at the other side of the pedestrian way ending up to their schoolyards. Thus, the deck materializes a continuity of movement that bonds together all elements of school space in a unity.

Technical information

Construction is materially and visually diversified so that to enhance best the quality of space and its graded articulation.
Rammed earth is used to shape the soft perimeter of the school, extensions of the classrooms and a malleable vertical space for learning and play activities.
Concrete is used for the basic infrastructure of classrooms, laboratories, and communal buildings such as the library, the refectory and common room.
A wooden deck is connecting all built and open air spaces.