Turó del Cargol School, Barcelona

Details

Site: Barcelona
Use: Educational

Description

The site on which the school is built is behind the sanctuary of Sant Josep de la Muntanya, in the district of La Salut. It is a very irregular piece of land, since it a part of the mountain with a total gradient of 25 metres. As a result, the school has two entrances, one in the upper part, beside a panoramic viewpoint, and the other in the lower part, beside the car park of the Hospital de l’Esperança which occupies the whole lower part of the complex.

In this context of abrupt relief the search for horizontal planes in order to make space for playgrounds is a constant feature of the project. This is made up of three buildings. The car park-platform block, above this a single-storey building in which the school facilities are placed (gymnasium, dining room, kitchen) with a playground on the same level, and finally, a third building, hanging over the mountain, in which the specifically educational spaces are placed. The three buildings together make up eight storeys in height. The position of the classrooms in the highest part of the land offers some excellent views of the city and means it gets the maximum amount of sunlight avoiding the shade that the large convent building projects.

The relationship of the buildings with the stone of the mountain, the recovery of the existing vegetation, the control of the sunlight, the vertical circulations and the near and distant views are the main questions that structured the completion of this project.

Project Name: Turó del Cargol School
Site: Carrer Sant Cugat 13, Barcelona
Use: Educational
Project date: 1993
Construction end date: 1997
Property:  Ajuntament de Barcelona
Land area: 4.058,79 m²
Floor area:  2.660 m²

Authors: Manuel Brullet i Tenas, Alfonso de Luna i Colldefors
Surveyors:  Josep Maria Sanmartin, Joan Rivas Lloret
Facilities:  T.C.A. (Briz/ Fumadó)
Structure: Manuel Arguijo y Asociados S.L.
Builder: TEYCO
Photographer: Eduardo Armentia y Carolina García
Publications:
01- Costruire nº 187, 1998 pp 118-121. Manuel Brullet ED Gustavo Gili 1998 pp 52-53