Multi-Facility Municipal Building In Sant Marti

Barcelona, Spain

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Multi-Facility Municipal Building In Sant Marti

Barcelona, Spain

Firm

SUMO Architects

Type

Educational › Elementary School Other
Landscape + Planning › Playground
Transport + Infrastructure › Parking

YEAR

2013

St. Martí's Primary School forms part of a multi-facility municipal building with an adult education
center and a two-story underground public carpark. Located in Barcelona’s Poblenou neighborhood, the carpark’s structural grid outlines the buildings above.
The goal was to reimagine the school starting from the urbanity of its location.
These days, the regulations and guidelines that guide the development of this type of facility
are indifferent to their surroundings. The requirements of outdoor and indoor spaces
are the same for a school in a rural environment as for one in a dense urban surrounding.
These poorly considered requirements result in very extensive and open schools in rural environments
while urban schools become too compact and indifferent to the cityscape.

Since the beginning of the St. Marti project, the intention has been to create an airy
and spacious school, open and sensitive to its surroundings, but predominantly urban.
The building is situated in a highly dense area where Cerdà's Eixample merges with the
Poblenou industrial layout. The dense and complex program (both indoor and outdoor), the
dimension of the plot, rigid urban planning rules, and the unmodifiable underground position
of the carpark, forced a reworking of the standard directives of public schools in order to adapt
St. Marti’s to this specific location. The bulk program of the school is located on the ground floor
and the roofs become school playgrounds. The proposal alternates the voids and constructed areas
with equal importance. Consequently, better use of natural light, ventilation and views
over the inner school spaces are made possible.

The construction of two basement floors, dedicated to a public underground carpark, allow us
to think of the school as a large roof that acts as a playground.
This decision generates a variety of outdoor spaces, such as patios on the street level,
transitional porches connected to these courtyards, vast open spaces on the first floor
and a space for urban allotments on the top terrace of the main building. These outdoor
spaces organize the indoor spaces according to their visual and physical relation to them.
Together with this sequence of outdoor spaces, the materiality of façades, built differently
depending on their situation, create the external image of the school.
The side street façades are built in a very tectonic way, with textured
concrete walls and a perforated steel enclosure, forming an abstract pattern. These façades are
the heaviest and most concealed, yet allow for the straight visual relation between the street and the courtyards.
In contrast, the rest of the facades are built with an industrialized, dry mounting and fast
execution system. These ventilated façades have undisputed advantages of heat
insulation and soundproofing as air flows into the intermediate cavity.
The constructive solution for the various roofs relates to their importance in the building
by use and extension. The ventilated roof surface, which is walkable, is perfectly adapted
to the Mediterranean climate.
The construction of these types of façades and roofs, the solar protection to the south and
the connection to a District Heating and Cooling Urban System (Districlima) have contributed to an urban
school that has achieved the Highest Energy Certification Class (A).

Photos by AitorEstévez (www.aitorestevez.com)