Architect: LosdelDesierto; Eva Luque, Alejandro Pascual, Spain  
Location: Almeria, Spain

The aim of this project was to help the development of psychomotor, mental, and social abilities. At an early age, and instinctively, children identify the pitched roof with the house, hence their drawings: the roof, the box and, last, the doors and windows. A nursery is a big house in which they spend most of their time. This idea is the origin of this proposal. The big structural roof is folded in space. This allows us to double the height of the floor so as to adapt the skyline to the next buildings as well as to amplify the interior space and the natural light.

Once the roof and the program were designed, Spanish architects LosdelDesierto had to decide upon the façade. They did not want the traditional windows that abound in the village. They wanted to give a special identity to the building. So they made up a simple system of panels in the form of a puzzle to configure the distribution of voids in the façade. The circular trims are coloured with special films in green-yellow, blue and magenta tones inside a laminated glass. During the day, the interior is tainted with different colors, like natural lanterns. At night the interior lights illuminate the façade, giving the quarter a fun look.

LosdelDesierto used a flexible vinyl laminate for floors and the base of walls. The colour of the material is used to differentiate classrooms by the age of the students. The world of the children is separated from the worlds of adults through the colour on the walls, which disappears at 1,30 metres, the height of the spatial vision of a child. Above this limit, the surfaces of the walls are unfinished and the facilities are all visible.
LosdelDesierto used a flexible vinyl laminate for floors and the base of walls. The colours of the vinyl are used to differentiate classrooms by the age of the students. Their selection criterion, they claim, contributes to the development of their psychomotor, mental and social capacities. For the classrooms designed for children under one year, the colour is blue (relaxation, the sea, the world of dreams); classrooms for children between one and two are painted in orange (psychomotor stimulation, activity); for children between two and three years of age, the colour chosen is green (contact with nature).

During the day, the interior is tainted with different colours, like natural lanterns. At night the interior lights illuminate the façade, giving the quarter a fun look.

Technical info: PVC flooring and wallcovering
Picture credits: David Frutos, Jesus Granada