Hasta La Ideas

Gabion walls, concrete staircases and huge rocks frame the spaces of this public park in Zaragoza by Spanish architects Héctor Fernández Elorza and Manuel Fernández Ramírez (+ slideshow).

Venecia Park spans a 415-metre stretch beside a ring road on the outskirts of the city, forming a gateway to the residential neighbourhoods to the south.

Architects Héctor Fernández Elorza and Manuel Fernández Ramírez, who previously teamed up on a park elsewhere in the city, were asked to overcome three issues – a 14-metre level change across the site, regular flooding caused by heavy rainfall and noise from the adjacent road.

The largest space in the park is a sunken concrete plaza in the south-west corner. Staircases lead down to it from all four corners, while the surrounding walls offer protection from the strong prevailing winds.

Most of the time this space can function as a pedestrian space, but it also doubles as an overflow basin for rainwater, reducing the impact of flooding to the surrounding residential areas.

To create a sound barrier and deal with the level change, the architects designed a system of rammed-earth banks to run along the north-west border of the park and fronted them with four staggered gabion walls, made from steel cages and stones.

Another sound barrier was required along the south-west side so the architects specified a wall made from oversized rocks, which they refer to as the “cyclopean wall”.

“This wall is conceived as an icon that characterises the new neighbourhood,” they said.

Young trees have been planted along some of the pathways, while metal shelters mark the location of viewpoints and ramps lead on towards the nearby canal.

“Venecia Park is a carefully planned topographical operation that complements the acoustic functions and flow-forming processes, in addition to providing green spaces to the city,” added the architects.

Other landscape architecture on Dezeen includes a public square in Croatia where steps, terraces and textured paving delineate different zones and a colourful city park in Copenhagen featuring street furniture from 60 different nations.

See more landscape architecture »
See more architecture and design in Spain »

Here’s a project description from the architects:

Venecia Park, Zaragoza

The green space within sector 88/1, known as Venecia Park, is located at its north-western limits, running parallel to the Ronda Hispanidad Avenue between the Calle Zafiro Roundabout and the historic channel of the Imperial Canal of Aragón. The project encompasses a linear urban infrastructure, averaging 415 metres in length and 60 metres in width: a surface area of approximately 2.5 hectares. It was required to address three issues: the resolution of an acoustic problem, the evacuation of rainfall deposits and the question of topography.

The sound issue caused by road traffic on the Ronda Hispanidad (Third Ring Road) affecting neighbouring dwellings, requires the establishment of a sound barrier to include the whole north-western border of the park. The existing topographical ground level difference between ground-level of the new residential quarter and the ring road reaches a maximum height of 14 metres, where the containment of the terrain is resolved by means of a system of reinforced earth walls. This is made up four steps set apart from one another by 1.50 metres, composed of a galvanised steel mesh and large gravel stones, thus forming a sound barrier that will protect future residential developments in the area.

To the far south-west of the park, where no significant topographical difference is noticeable, the issue of sound containment is resolved by means of a Cyclopean wall 100 metres long with a maximum height of 10 metres. This wall is moreover conceived as an icon that characterises the new neighbourhood and also provides access to the underground square or mill basin situated in its extrados.

This laminar flow basin is designed to cope with the intense rainfall that affects the area, thus preventing floodwaters from emptying into the municipal network, whose diameter and capacity are insufficient to deal with such heavy quantities of rainwater. This compound with its large surface area (3,150 m2), whose use as a laminar flow space will be conditioned by the frequency and intensity of local rainfall, has been conceived and designed as an urban space or pedestrian square for most of the year and a welcome area of shelter from the unpleasant Cierzo wind which blows in this upper area of the city. Four stairs situated at the corners provide access to the underground square, connecting with the adjacent neighbourhood and the city level. The incorporation of sufficiently wide ramps situated within the sound barrier wall gives access to service and maintenance vehicles and a more ample use of the compound.

Finally Venecia Park is a carefully planned topographical operation that complements the acoustic functions and flow-forming processes described above in addition to providing green spaces to the city. All this is structured spatially over the Ronda Hispanidad by means of staggered interconnecting platforms in a linear or extended link-up of little squares (hard and soft), viewing points protected with light metallic pergolas, extensive groves of pines and pedestrian ramps leading to the historic heritage site of Aragón’s Imperial Canal.

Architects: Héctor Fernández Elorza, Manuel Fernández Ramírez
Collaborators: Félix Royo Millán, José Antonio Alonso García, Antonio Gros Bañeres, Beatriz Navarro Pérez (Engineers)
Location: Sector 88/1, Pinares de Venecia, Zaragoza
Project: 2008
Construction: 1 July 2009 – 31 December 2011
Client: Junta de Compensación del Sector 88/1
Constructor: IDECON, S.A.U.
Surface Area: 2,5 Ha.
Budget: 2.598.799 euros

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and Manuel Fernández Ramírez appeared first on Dezeen.

This primary school and kindergarten in Zaragoza was conceived by Spanish studio Magén Arquitectos as a village of classrooms with stripy cladding and pyramid-shaped rooftops (+ slideshow).

Magén Arquitectos completed the single-storey kindergarten building in 2010 and has since added a three-storey school and an accompanying canteen and sports hall.

The three buildings wrap around a large shared playground and are united by a low-level canopy that runs along the facade of each block.

“From a distant vision, the grouping of classroom ‘houses’ around the courtyard garden refers to the idea of a village or town, as a set of independent living units that colonise a place,” said the architects.

A modular concrete construction guided the layout of the building, creating rows of classrooms with angled ceilings.

“These prefabricated elements, topped with a skylight, function as lighting and sound absorption domes, providing a more uniform distribution of light across the surface of the classroom and significantly reducing noise inside,” said the architects.

Each classroom faces towards the playground, but windows can be screened using colourful louvres in shades of red, orange and purple.

Precast concrete staircases rise up through the three-storey building, plus the facades are selectively clad with timber panels.

Magén Arquitectos is led by architect Jaime Magén. Other projects by the studio include aluminium-clad social housing and a timber and concrete building for Zaragoza City Council. See more architecture by Magén Arquitectos.

See more recent school design, including a timber-clad school in Japan by Kengo Kuma.

Photography is by Jesus Granada.

Here’s more information from Magén Arquitectos:

School Complex in Zaragozaf

The new school complex, which holds different educational levels from three to twelve years, is located in a residential area on the outskirts, southwest of Zaragoza. The absence of urban references, given the isolated location of the plot, makes to conceive the project from the inside out, based in their own internal requirements. From the educational point of view, the focus is on the pedagogical value of teaching spaces and the school is seen as a significant experience in spatial terms, related to the child’s creative world. In this sense, the project meets the sensorial relationship between children and architecture, using geometry, space, light, materiality and colour.

From the logic of the project, the proposed architecture develops the concept of unity and multiplicity, associated with the fragmentation of the program in classrooms and diverse sets of unique elements, “additive houses”, which are related by porches and patios, streets and squares, interiors and exterior. This approach also addresses the relationship between the domestic scale accompanying the child and the community dimension of public facilities in a new residential neighborhood. The study of the circulations, natural lighting and acoustics were other key factors in the development of the project.

The project fits in with the urbanistic rules of the plot and the necessary differentiation between different educational cycles without losing its unitary condition. The centre has a total of 18 elementary classrooms, 9 children, six supportings classrooms, a multipurpose room, a library, a music room, a computer room, an arts classroom, gym, kitchen, staff rooms and administrative areas. The extensive program is divided into three smaller-scale buildings, as a result also of the need to build in phases. The layout of the main volumes (kindergarten, primary school, dining hall and gym) responds to the preferred orientation to the south of the teaching spaces, a different set of common outdoor areas to access, play and relationship, and prevent volumes cast shadows on these spaces.

A continuous porch links the three buildings, connecting their different accesses, which allow the differentiation of cycles and allow the use of some areas independently. An access for students to the kindergarten, one for elementary students, one for parents and teachers and a restricted one to the office, in the dining hall. The project is adjusted to the topography by two horizontal platforms with a height of 1.70 m. between them, coinciding with the different levels of access from the street. Given the relationship between interior and exterior spaces, all the spaces takes place mainly on the ground floor, except the elementary classrooms, a longitudinal prism whose three stacked floors remain the clearly horizontal configuration of the set.

At the level between three and six years, the school contributes to the playful atmosphere that the child needs at this crucial stage for learning and skills development. The planning of the kindergarten, on the south side of the plot, is based in some ideas about setting up an environment specifically designed for the child, as the first level of socialisation, advanced by Maria Montessori in the early twentieth century, in their first “Case dei Bambini” (Children’s House). This idea of the classroom as a home that protects and shelters, refers to the anthropological origins of the room -the cabin- and is manifested in truncated-pyramidal pitched roofs over square classrooms. Each group of children inhabit a classroom-or “house” -. All are equal in elementary geometry, while different, by their position, orientation, location of the skylight, colour and relationship to the rest.

The classrooms are oriented to the south to ensure natural lighting and are grouped around the common outdoor space for games and outdoor activities. A cantilever, which runs around the perimeter of this space, protects from the sun and rain. From a distant vision, the grouping of classrooms, “houses” around the courtyard garden refers to the idea of village or town, as a set of independent living units that colonise a place.

From the inside, these prefabricated elements, topped with a skylight, function as lighting and sound absorption domes, providing a more uniform distribution of light across the surface of the classroom and significantly reducing noise inside. The increased height also improves thermal conditions in summer, while the underfloor heating system ensures comfort in winter. The child classroom setting, a key element in a building of this type, provides a direct correlation between this essential use and an identifiable form, such as spatial unit, structural and constructive. The building is based on a space module of 7.20 x 7.20 x 3.60 m., which matches the dimensions of the room and define its structure, functional organisation and its formal configuration. The other school spaces are configured through the subdivision and/or addition of these modules, creating airy and flexible interiors that would allow future expansion or reform actions. The modular skylight covered-up makes an identifiable profile, a fifth facade, visible from near residential buildings.

The configuration of dining hall and gym building is based on the clear distinction between the two main rooms of different surface and height although both airy and covered with skylights, and their respective service areas: toilets, kitchen, and facilities in the case of dining, locker rooms, toilets and stores, in the gym.

The attention to scale and volumetric fragmentation is also present in the linear building intended for elementary education. In this case, the project focused teaching areas in a volume of three floors, while the rest of the program (lobby, auditorium, library) are situated on the ground floor, linked to access. This arrangement allows the independent use of these spaces outside school hours. Given the organisation of classrooms, largely dictated by the economic logic of such projects, stairs are proposed as unique spaces in contrast to the regulatory route. The position and configuration of the three cores makes them transition spaces of relationship with the outside as lookouts that provide lighting and distant views from different levels indoors.

Both the haste in construction times of the phases and budget constraints conditioned building solutions and materials, advising to choose a standardised modulation system to facilitate its implementation. The use of composite panels with natural wood siding responds to reconcile the idea of industrialisation and speed of execution with a nice finish for the child. Within a rigorous modulation, the variable arrangement of the panels, horizontal or vertical, colour and finish in places, provides certain resonances of play, appropriate to the character of the project. Latticed aluminum slats protect classrooms and sieved solar radiation outside the presence in the classroom. In contrast to the chromatic treatment abroad, the interiors are characterised by neutral and uniform finishes; the surfaces in contact with the child, floors and walls, are finished to a certain height in continuity material in each space, and those out of reach in white with sound absorbing materials. The result is a school built entirely with industrial techniques that have enabled significantly lowering costs and deadlines.

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by Magén Arquitectos appeared first on Dezeen.

Students arriving at and departing from this school in Zaragoza, Spain, often obstructed sports games in the playground, so architect Guzmán de Yarza Blache decided to lift one of the sports courts up out of the way (+ slideshow).

Raised up by one storey, the new elevated sports court sits at the entrance to Lasalle Franciscanas School. It is held in place by concrete pilotis, creating a sheltered entranceway underneath that can also be used as a general playground.

Yarza Blache, a director at J1 Arquitectos, was asked to complete installation of the structure during the six week summer holiday period, so he specified a prefabricated concrete structure that could be built in just a few days.

Two layers of steel fencing were added to create see-through walls, which are curved over at the top to prevent balls from escaping. The outer layer sits within a Corten steel planting box, so that ivy can grow up and eventually surround the court.

Ramps extend down from both sides of the structure, leading to an infants’ play area on one side and an entrance to the building on the other.

Since its opening, children at the school have nicknamed the structure “The Whale” in reference to its bulbous shape.

Other playground structures completed in recent years include a pavilion featuring funhouse mirrors and a building with fairytales engraved into its facade. See more stories about schools.

Photography is by Miguel de Guzmán.

Here’s a translated project description from the architect:

Elevated Sports Court at Lasalle Franciscanas School

The commission is originated by the need from the school to augment the total surface of the courtyard that due to the great amount of students and parents that usually gather during the day, can sometimes obstruct the correct developing of the sports and leisure activities that should take place in it.

The courtyard is 33 metres wide by 35 metres long and has a south-east orientation. It is formed by the existing school that has a U form with two wings, one from the 50’s and another one from the 70’s.

The fact of being a school meant that we had to accomplish the building works exclusively during the summer months. That fact made immediately think about a prefabricated concrete structure that could be built in a couple of days, and that could also solve the 13 meters distance that we wanted to cover in the ground level.

The necessary elimination of the two existing trees in the courtyard gave another of the key drivers of the project; the inclusion of vegetation in the new structure. To do so we have designed a 70 metres long corten steel flower pot from which almost three hundreds of ivy plants grow, that in a few years will have covered the whole metallic bubble.

That metallic bubble is formed with a double layer of galvanized steel, so one of the layers can help the ivy grow while the other one can resist the practice of teenager ball-related sports.

The ground level hosts a garden-bench with an organic shape that includes different species of plants and allows the parents and the students to sit down and observe. The relation of the new volume with the rest of the school also had to be solved, for which a soft 45-meter ramp was designed to connect the ground level with an intermediate level and the elevated court.

Another organic ramp was also included to let the children from the infantile area get out to their courtyard´s zone, also in the ground level and partly under the court.

The later visits to the school have revealed the success of the project and its fast iconic assimilation by the students, who have kindly called it “The Whale”.

Architect: Guzmán de Yarza Blache
Finishing Date: September 2012
Location: Calle Andrés Piquer 5, Zaragoza.Spain
Client: Lasalle Franciscanas School
Built Surface: 350 sqm
Budget: 290.000 Euros

Contractor: GM Empresa Constructora
Collaborators: Ana Guzmán Malpica, Julien Luengo-Gómez
Quantity Surveyor: Jose Manuel Arguedas
Structure: Josep Agustí de Ciurana, PRAINSA

Above: ground level plan – click for larger image

Above: court level plan – click for larger image

Above: roof plan – click for larger image

Above: long section – click for larger image

Above: cross section – click for larger image

Above: long elevation – click for larger image

Above: side elevation – click for larger image

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Guzmán de Yarza Blache appeared first on Dezeen.

You can’t miss this bright red psychiatric centre in Spain, where the differently pitched roofs are meant to reveal how much mental activity takes place in each room.

Completed by Spanish architects ///g.bang/// the new youth facility in Zaragoza connects to the existing Nuestra Señora del Carmen Neuropsychiatric Centre through an underground tunnel.

Roofs with the steepest pitches are located above shared common rooms, while shallow gables correspond to patient bedrooms and staff quarters are located beneath flat roofs.

The red powder-coated zinc sheets cover the entire exterior, interrupted only by frameless windows.

In the past we’ve also featured a mental health clinic where the doors don’t open but the walls do instead – take a look here.

Photography is by Jesús Granada.

Here’s a longer description from architects:

Young Disabled Moduls and Workshop Pavilions
‘Módulo Para El Tratamiento De Jóvenes Con Discapacidades Conductuales’

ONE CONCEPT, ONE COLOR AND ONE MATERIAL

The assignment is motivated by the need to expand the Neuropsychiatric Center Our Lady of Carmen, in Zaragoza.

In the first phase there is a new support center for youth with behavioral problems, and currently sharing facilities with the geriatric section and, by the nature of their treatment and pathology, was necessary to become independent.

In a second phase will be built the “Module for Occupational Workshops.”

PROGRAM

It has 10 single bedrooms and 8 double rooms, with toilets. The common areas of the internal are two living rooms and dining room.

The program is completed with, reception room, two offices, laundry, office, control room toilets, storage and utility room.

GEOMETRY

The floor plan is rectangular, dimensions 15.5 x 65 m. The facade has no cantilevers , but reflects the emptying of the building volume in the direction north, creating a courtyard to capture sunlight and allow controlled the patients to stay there in the summer.

The roof, for the most part, sawtooth shape, with variable slopes – very steep at some points – reflects, from the outside, the degree of internal mental activity in relation to the type of rooms they occupy: the resting or sleeping area with a slope of 60%, common areas or with maximum activity have outstanding peak of 240%.

The treatment of the spaces occupied by the medical staff and caregivers has been dealt with flat roofs.

Click above for larger image

MATERIAL/COLOR

Façade and roof are covered with red zinc coated sheet. Historically, these centers, known as asylums were unrecognizable and hidden by society.

Click above for larger image

But Hospital, “hospitare” in Latin, means “to receive as a guest” and together with the values of the Congregation and its founder, “Hospitality between people who suffer mental impairment” and “integrating the patients into society as far as possible” where the main goals… The red color is a symbol that makes them visible… that robs us of prejudice… that emphasizes the social work… makes us more sexy! The material… the shape of this whole “scene” had to be modeled nobly!

Architect: José Javier Gallardo Ortega ///g.bang///
Graphic design: Ivo Gigante Tiago
Client: Nuestra Señora del Carmen Neuropsychiatric Centre | Hermanas Hospitalarias del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús

Type: Medical Facility
Location: Camino del Abejar – Zaragoza, 50011, Spain
Building status: built in 2011
Number of stories: 1 (+1 underground connection with the existing buildings)
Site size: 12000 m2
Site type: Suburban
Building area: 1000 m2
Budget: 1500000 USD