Library + School Farm, Collado Villalba, Madrid

Library + School Farm, Collado Villalba, Madrid

Projects 3

Delivered: 2004 Spring

Tutors: Sergio de Miguel + Mónica Alberola

TU: Capitel

This new project for the downtown Collado Villalba is conceived as a whole programme. The council brief is to fill voids in the urban context with equipments for the inhabitants and tourists: a school-farm and a car park in the village boundary and a library in the main square, in front of the town-hall. 

The strategy is the same in all the development: to produce the design with a crooked ribbon which could act as walls, book stacks, spaces or fences.

The school-farm is located in a huge plot in the North of the village. The ribbon’s design begins with the car park, following with the keeper house, then the fence and finally the elongated single- storey building with all the facilities for children and instructors: rooms, wardrobes, classrooms, craft workshops, canteen and kitchen. This chain of uses stands in spiral shape. It prompts the circulation and wraps the inner space for harvesting, farming and playing.

The library is made with another ribbon, trying to wrap the intern plot in the square and leaving inner courtyards. In this design, the ribbon houses the book stacks, stretching out into three storeys. The staircase flushed with the inner courtyard and joining the storeys is also made with the same stacks.

The access is located in the back street, going through a tinny garden, looking to the town hall square. The ground floor houses facilities for the village like a conference room and a newspaper library. Two storeys above comprise study spaces with desks inserted in the ribbon among the book stacks and administrative offices. Regarding to the ribbon, the mostly glazed elevations change with the movement of the books by users. The light drawn into by these elevations also suffers changes and sifts.