Secondary form: honed to respond to intense Catalonian light and to a rural landscape, this school fosters the development of individuals into being adult members of a community

Architectural Review, The, Feb, 2003 by John Anstruther

Schools are the places in which we grow from being protected members of families to citizens, semi-autonomous people in society. So the principal spatial problem for school designers is to generate a hierarchy of spaces that range from shelter for timid and nervous individuals, through places for groups small and large, to focus areas in which the whole community can come together.

In arranging such hierarchies, circulation systems are of great importance, for it is in these that the ordinary social interactions of school take place. They should be carefully adjusted to the age of the children. For the smallest, everything should be intimate: long vistas and large volumes are clearly to be avoided. As pupils become older and grow into students, circulation systems ought to become more complicated, offering ever more complex interpretations of the individual in space and society. Many schools get this transition very wrong, presenting the transition from being little and almost defenceless to being a virtually independent individual as merely the experience of a succession of more and more institutional spaces. Indeed, this was the overwhelming experience of most schools until the middle of last century. But in Europe at least, postwar school design began to explore the possibilities of generating spaces that could respond to the changing perceptions of growing people.

The secondary school by Carme Pinos at Mollerussa, a small town to the east of Lleida (Lerida) in Catalonia, is an important addition to this tradition: a fascinating proposal about how to generate a building that can help and reinforce increasing adulthood and involvement of the individual with society, while preserving personal identity. The site is quite small for its contents. A rectangle on the edge of the village among orchards and fields, it has to accommodate two full-scale sports fields as well as gardens and the large building.

In effect, the site is divided into three semi-independent spaces by the building: entrance to the south, playing fields to the west, and tranquil tree-planted garden. The entrance is gently emphasized by the canted wings of the library, laboratory and administration wing, and the one housing gym and cafeteria. The main interior axis runs from south to north, with laboratories and most classrooms looking over the orchard to the east, and smaller tutorial spaces facing west. So the rooms are appropriately orientated, with the larger and more impersonal ones avoiding the heat and glare of the later part of the day, and the smaller ones (in which the internal climate can be more easily controlled by individuals) facing afternoon and evening sun.

All this is held together by an armature of circulation, a long south-north, multi-level volume that relates all the different parts of the organization. Ramps, stairs, galleries and balconies of this gentle yet powerful spine offer the complexities needed by emerging adults, affording a range of experience from axial directionality to semi-privacy in its interstices. The whole complex volume is mainly lit from clerestories that cast slowly-moving sunlight down to ground level. Without regular sunlight, the place can be almost Piranesian; when the sun shines, it becomes full of multiple possibilities. The space distils natural forces and uses them to provide a continuously changing stage-set on which people starting out in life can write their own scripts.

Construction is conventional, economical and careful. The grey, well cast, easily maintained concrete structure is exposed. Infill is white painted blockwork. Roofs and fascias are of standard ribbed metal sheeting. It is a tough, honed building, yet tender to its users. Seen from a distance across the fields and fruit trees, its pitched roofs and white walls harmonize with the traditional rural buildings. The school is a quiet focus of community.

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Architect

Carme Pinos, Barcelona

Project team

Carme Pinos Desplat, Juan Antonio Andreu, Javier Bustos, Ferran Grau, Cristina Ramos, Nicola Regusci

Photographs

Duccia Malagamba

1

From south, with new school garden, right.

2

Simple pitched roofs and white walls harmonize with traditional agricultural buildings.

3

From north-east, laboratory block to left.

4

Ground floor classrooms on east side have communal covered patios.

5

Main entrance from south with library, right, topped by laboratories and gymnasium/cafeteria block, left.

6

Ramps, stairs and galleries in ever-changing light offer wide spectrum of social spaces.

7

Looking south towards main entrance.

8

Circulation armature that unites all volumes.