The Chigorodó educational institution (I.E. Chigorodó), located in the municipality of the same name in Urabá, Colombia, is a group of buildings built, from the 60s to the present, mostly by the same community it serves. They are buildings that, although they denote people's interest in guaranteeing a future for their children, also have multiple constructive and technical problems, and especially climatic ones, which make them spaces that are not very suitable for children's learning and play. Added to this is that the local population has continued to grow and demand greater capacity from the institution, which could not be met, forcing parents to look for more distant schools, even in other municipalities, to be able to educate their children.
This has led the Fundrafut foundation to include the I.E. Chigorodó in the plan to improve Urabá schools, a long-term effort in which the aim is to restore dignity to the educational spaces in the area, in addition to promoting them as centers of community integration that serve not only children but everyone the actors of the territory.
As the beginning of the process of improving the institution, work meetings were held with the community to construct an architectural program that would reflect the real needs of those who will ultimately inhabit the building. Priority was then given to the construction of four new classrooms that increased the school's capacity by 140 children, and a coliseum that allows sports activities to be carried out under the shade, protecting from the strong sun in the area and to carry out all collective activities, not just those of the school, functioning as a covered plaza. To these two elements, the team of architects added a series of associated bathrooms, a kitchen and dining room that ensure adequate nutrition for the children, and a new access for the institution, which becomes a worthy meeting point for everyone.
Beyond the programmatic needs, the central interest of our project has been to integrate the climate conditions and local culture into this expansion, a culture in which people live outside, on shaded porches and thresholds, in a town with average temperatures of 30° centigrade. These intermediate spaces also promote spontaneous meetings between the inhabitants of the municipality, thus reinforcing the sense of community.
Although the master plan involves changing all of the existing buildings, in this first phase of intervention it has been decided not to change any of these in order not to reduce the capacity of the school. It was then decided to unify the different pre-existing architectures through the construction of a low L-shaped volume, which contains the dining room, services and classrooms, and which together with the pre-existing structures define a central patio, as a meeting space. collective.
In the middle of this central space, the coliseum is built, a space that, going beyond the mere sporting function, is conceived as a covered plaza open to the entire community. This coliseum allows defining two other areas in the large courtyard, a hard plaza connected to the access, and a playground in the middle of the trees. The location of the coliseum in the middle of the institution helps maintain the low scale of the environment, in which a single level of height is rarely exceeded, as well as the set of roofs that give it a distinctive silhouette that distances it from of the archetypal coliseums, help it become a reference for the inhabitants of the municipality. As part of the patio spaces, a cover has also been built without a defined program, an open space where students can be freely, protected from the sun and rain, and which is accompanied by a specific piece of furniture that promotes different ways of living. and posing the body
Also directly linked to the patio, the school's new classrooms have been designed. Among these, meeting spaces prior to class are generated, free and non-hierarchical spaces where free discussion is promoted. These classrooms, as well as the coliseum, open to the collective spaces of the institution through permeable facades, being more than a traditional closed space, one open to the collective and the environment.
Building in the tropics implies understanding the climate as a central aspect of buildings, even more so in extreme situations like Urabá, which is why the classrooms, the coliseum and the service spaces are designed with large eaves that protect them from the direct sun, At the same time, with openwork and blinds that generate cross ventilation, they reduce the thermal sensation inside the spaces, while allowing natural lighting of the entire building. For this reason, white has been chosen as the color of the new works, giving the light of the project a reflected and diffuse condition. The sloping roofs of buildings reduce future maintenance and allow rainwater to be stored and processed for consumption by the I.E. Chigorodó, a primary need in an area where water cuts are permanent.
Finally, a new access has been built, moving the edge of the school a few meters inward from its current limit. This movement generates a shaded space, where parents can wait for their children, but also a permeable façade that reconnects the interior of the I.E. Chigorodó with the community of which it is part.
In the time that has passed since its inauguration, the community in general, and not just the educational community, has intensely appropriated the spaces, becoming more than a school, it has become a community center that operates until late at night and in which All types of cultural, educational, community and sports activities take place in cool, shaded spaces, which, as previously stated, have been designed to meet the climate and culture of the inhabitants of Chigorodó.
