Villanueva de la Serena High School. Badajoz

This contest was called by the Junta de Extremadura. Although we developed the complete execution project, the direction of the works was done exclusively by officials of the Board, so that some of the substantial details of the Project were changed and others were not built, without consulting us during the process. For this reason, although the building preserves the spirit of the project, the final result, both in the finishes and as a whole, does not reproduce the image that we would have wanted.

The site was located in the middle of an olive grove and facing the mountains, and the project conserved part of the olive trees inside our plot. The main façade of the building was open to the view of the distant mountains, facing North, since it was a town in Extremadura that was badly hit by the sun. Through a gently stepped porch you access the open lobby, between glazed patios, also with olive trees, and with transparencies to the back porch for games and gymnastics. The gym, the cafeteria and the specific or multipurpose classrooms form a single whole that, surrounded by porches, can be used as a playground and, on occasions, configure different seating positions that, together with the fixed stands, allow any event or show .

On the upper floor, the teaching area itself: classrooms and laboratories, facing North-South. The whole, an architecture without superfluous elements, but rich in endearing spaces and small surprises. A very open and apparently compact building, in which both the strong overhang of the access porch and the dimensions of the single volume achieve the resounding image of an institutional complex.