Nursery BVM Irlandesas

The project consists of the refurbishment and extension of the nursery education area of the B.V.M. Irlandesas school (Seville), echich belons to the Modern Heritage of the 20th century (built in 1964, and reformed in 1975), being the architects Fernando and Joaquín Barquín y Barón. The school is catalogued with protection C grade, whose delimitation does not include the free area where the ampliation of the present project is built in 2019.

The project consists on:

1. Refurbishment of modern protected building, conserving the facades and roof.
2. New extension building.

The purpose of the project is to approach the intervention in the Modern Heritage in an innovative and sustainable way, highlighting the pre-existing building, reinterpreting with contemporary architecture the spatial and programmatic values of the modern architecture on which it is acting, promoting its relationship with the open space and gardens.

The proposal starts from the singularity of the nursery education original building, which consists of a grouping of three low volume classrooms that contrast with the compactness, linearity, and reticle of the primary and secondary education buildings. This original modern building is interpreted as the first cluster, to which the two new intervention clusters will be added, indetifiable by their south-facing position. These are unified under a continuous roof, resolving with a single element the roofs of the classrooms, the covered itineraries for teachers and children, and the playground covered area.

The currently dispersed common uses will be relocated within the same area which have to be rehabilitated, with the objective of grouping the nursery education’s buildings in the same independent enclosure.

The new intervention has been developed with the intention of highlighting the positive aspects found in the existing modern architecture, as well as resolving the pethologies and negative aspects indentified in it.

Authors: Sara de Giles Dubois; José Morales Sánchez; Rocío Casado Coca