Woven into the Block

Project

San Juan de Ribera School

Status

Competition, 1st prize

Type

School and kindergarten

Year

2009

Location

Valencia, Spain

Credits

Marin Marinović
Susana Iñarra
Nenad Katić
Alex Ayala
Monica Espi
Filip Zlatković

A replacement school woven into a dense urban block, where closed courtyards and mismatched heights define the street. The project reorganises the full plot, access, sports ground, gardens and enclosure, into a single coherent piece, absorbing an adjacent disused building once grafted onto the site and freeing it from years of provisional, prefabricated fixes.

A raw concrete base anchors the corner, its perimeter dissolved into a vertical screen that filters the street without closing it off. Above, warm toned pigmented concrete volumes cantilever outward, sheltering the entrances and turning the ground floor into covered, ambiguous space between inside and out. Exposed concrete and glass are left unadorned, warmed inside by bands of yellow marking circulation and gathering points against grey stairs and corridors.

Six infant classrooms, twelve primary units and a dining hall mediate a one metre fall across the site, turning a constraint into a legible order. Two entrances anchor the school within its neighbourhood, while a painted courtyard marked out for play gives the children's daily rituals their own ground beneath the building's shade.