SÚNION

Barcelona, Spain

Video © Adrià Goula

A+ Award in “Arquitectura de Edificios para la Educación”, 2010

The educational project of the Súnion School is based on three main principles: the sense of the respect, the capacity of self-concentration, and the constitution of a community. These three starting points are translated, on one hand into a visual connection between the various built volumes, and on the other hand in a maximal transparency between the various workspaces: classrooms, "seminars" (places for exchange), or offices.

An operational principle of corridor - cupboard organizes the circulation spaces. In every floor, facing the street, wooden boxes have been disposed, thought as the place of the informal exchange between students. This driving idea of the project, the active circulations and the areas of exchange, establishes the vertebral column of a dynamic proposal, enriching the school and favoring the spaces of contact which are placed around it. At the same time, the will to give every floor a specific point of interrelation and information exchange between the students and the teachers, generates a distribution organized around a central compact core, made up of seminar rooms and offices.

The access to the school was thought as an extension of the public sidewalk space. This space, which works as a private shared space, as an extension of the public space (ps), is developed on a double height stressing the process of accessing the school and providing it with an urban scale.