PRIMARY SCHOOL

KAIRALOORO COMPETITION

Evangelia Siskaki, Costantina Golemi, Evgenia Chatziioannou

Right at the intersection of urban and suburban we create an incident of public and
private space. 

The basic idea of the composition is to create a gradual introversion
from the public character we give by placing the canteen and garden spaces to the
private one by placing the workshops and study spaces. All the spaces are placed
under a shed that acts as a shell for the needs of the school. Large silos - water tanks
create a landmark for the city and at the same time they gather around them the
gardens and the dispensing area of the canteen, which also has a double status since
it manages, through the large openings to the provincial road, to welcome the visitor,
but also with the covered inner courtyard, to create a meeting core for the students.

The placement of the classrooms creates a miniature of the city, while the wandering
between them, leads to the central atrium which functions as a continuation of the
multi-purpose room which is isolated through the variable storage spaces. Finally, in a
strict linear arrangement, the doctor's office, which maintains its contact with the city, is
placed first, followed by the laboratories and offices, defining their degree of specificity
by placing the entrance through an internal corridor parallel to the boundary of the
intervention. By choosing to place the more social parts, such as the canteen, the info
point and the doctor's office, at the front of our intervention, we make an invitation to
the visitor to discover the collective actions that take place in our construction. The use
of the materials was done with attention to the feeling and familiarity that visitors can
have with them. We therefore consider the school complex to be more than an
educational facility. 

At times when the school is not open it is a structure open to the
community. This means that the space complementarily functions as a core of the
community itself, serving different scenarios beyond the necessary daytime education
of the students. The kitchen positioned at the front of the compound can host
community meals or local celebrations and meetings. Similarly, the garden function
firstly as a means of education and through connection with nature but also give an
autonomy to the operation of the educational unit and at the same time support the
community market since they can be used and cultivated by local residents. Finally, the
workshop rooms and equipment are at the disposal of the residents in order to organize
workshops or skills training within the community (textile, sewing, basketry, etc.) 

The rammed earth was the basic building material of the composition as its robustness
could, with the simultaneous lightness of the composition, arouse the interest of the user.
Its rigid structure breaks down as it approaches the community, ultimately negating the
boundary of the intervention with the city; the wooden structure of the roof covered
with sheet metal helps with its lightness to read the proposal as a tapestry able to
create in its shadow, scenarios of use in collective and individual terms.

The structure of the classrooms consist of rammed earth walls that supports wooden tie
beams where bamboo are placed to conclude the shading of the structure.

The roof is made of double rosewood columns that supports the tie beams on a 5x5m
matrix. On the tie beams we place battens which support the metal sheets.