The Mare de Déu de Gràcia public school is located in Biar, a town of about 4,000 inhabitants located in the easternmost part of the Sierra Mariola. Its urban center, with a medieval layout, is crowned by a castle built in the 13th century from which you can see, on the one hand, the dry and diligently cultivated lands and, on the other, the mountains that extend to the smooth beaches of the Mediterranean Sea.
These cultivated lands are marked by mansions on which they depend, sober houses of considerable size, perfectly anchored to the land to which they belong.

A few meters from the well-kept historic center of Biar and ascending the mountain, there are a series of industrial buildings and a public school that includes two buildings built between the seventies and eighties.
The buildings have no value, but they are located on this terraced mountain on platforms bounded by lines of large cypresses that form a beautiful outdoor space.
The project consisted of completing the school's deficiencies. To add a classroom for the youngest children, a gym for the older ones, to make all exterior and interior spaces accessible and to improve the energy efficiency of the existing buildings.
In addition to meeting these objectives, we wanted to take advantage of the intervention to give the school an identity that it did not have, because it is made up of buildings that either come from projects sent from a ministry without taking into account the place, or from projects that are identified with an era, but not with a place.

We wanted the school to be anchored to the land, like the mansions that own the cultivated land. To give Biar the opportunity to grow with the same quality with which it preserves its center and its fields.
The garden, with its terraces and its large cypress trees always sunny, produces a particular tranquility and only needed small interventions to erase the improper elements built over time. We thus turned the garden into the center of three isolated buildings that are connected on only two levels, solving both the functioning of the center and the accessibility.

The new buildings are constructed with exposed concrete walls and slabs, which stiffen and enclose a light metal structure confined by glazed surfaces and thermo-clay walls plastered with the colors of the earth, like the farmhouses.
The garden, with its terraces and large cypresses always sunny, produces a particular tranquility and only needed small interventions to erase the inappropriate elements built over time. We thus converted the garden into the center of three isolated buildings that are connected on just two levels, solving both the functioning of the school and the accessibility.

The new buildings are built with exposed concrete walls and slabs, which stiffen and close a light metal structure confined by glass surfaces and thermo-clay walls plastered with the colors of the earth, like the farmhouses.
The walls, structure, the plastered coating and glass surfaces appear identical on the outside and inside of the building, which contributes to the garden being perceived consistently.

In both the new and the old building, operations have been carried out that contribute to the garden becoming the center.
The height and inclination of the slabs that cover the children's classrooms allow double lighting and ventilation in the classrooms and the glass surfaces a wide view of the verticality of the cypresses.
The gym has its access on the façade perpendicular to the garden, but the inclination of its roofs slides into ramps that lead to the sports court. In this way, the building becomes a balcony that overlooks the garden and from which you can see the games on this court located on its lowest platform.

Team:

Architecture Studio: Sogo Arquitectos
Lourdes Garcia Sogo & Asociados, Arquitectura, Urbanismo E Infraestructuras S.l.p.

Architects:Lourdes García Sogo. Doctorate In Architecture.
Antonio Naranjo. Architect. Bim Manager

Collaborators: José Barrero Mateo. Architect.

Facilities: Valnu, Servicios De Ingeniería S.l.; Juan Llobell Llobell. Industrial Engineer

Structures: Valter, Valenciana De Estructuras S.l .; Juan F. Moyá Soriano. Civil Engineer.

Contractor: Orthem, Servicio Y Actuaciones Ambientales, S.a.u.

Photo Credits:  Mariela Apolonio

Materials Used:

Facade cladding: Mineral plaster. Morcemsec (PUMA Group)
 Applied on thermoclay.
Inner sheet of laminated gypsum board. KNAUF
Flooring: Polished in-situ concrete in interior.
Stone pavement in bathrooms. SAN VICENTE 
Washed in-situ concrete in exterior.
Doors: Aluminum with thermal break. EXLABESA - PRS-72
Aluminum. TECHNAL SOLEAL-PY-FA-0040 (Interior)
Windows: Aluminum with thermal break. EXLABESA - ARS-72 HO
Interior lighting: Led. PRITEC