Escuela Normal Nº1 Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, ciudad de Leandro Alem, 1957-63. Mario Soto, Raúl Rivarola, arquitectos. Colección particular.
Escuela Normal, en Leandro Alem, prov. Misiones, Argentina, 1957/61. Mario Soto y Raúl Rivarla, arquitectos. Corte transversal. Bullrich, Francisco. Arquitectura Latinoamericana. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1969, p. 149.
A combination of discrete architectural parts such as a roof, a block and a platform, destined to generate an urban space inside a building, was masterfully proposed by the team formed by Osvaldo Bidinost, Jorge Chute, Jose Gassó, Mabel Lapacó and Martín Meyer, at the Higher School of Commerce of the University of Córdoba (1959-71) 10 . Inscribed within the boundary of the traditional city block, a platform programmatically assumes the extra-curricular activities -from the music halls to the swimming pool- and a large terrace extends to the edge of the site establishing a connection with the city river. The large roof and the series of columns constitute the greatest expression of the building. The strategy was to create a covered open patio, with a continuous block of classrooms that form a backdrop closed to the street. The 108m long by 36m wide roof is composed of a succession of 15 cylindrical vaults that are transformed into conoids, of colored concrete, supported by a series of columns. An extensive volume of pleated section, which contains the labs, partially limits the covered patio and holds free-standing volumes and a large ramp as a formal protagonist of the space. Mario Soto and Raúl Rivarola developed between 1957 and 1962 the Normal School Nº1 of the city of Leandro Alem, in the province of Misiones 11 . In a subtropical and rainy climate, where only shade and the refreshing winds of the south can alleviate daily life, the architects proposed a large roof covering a rectangular plan, resting on a system
configured by the two main façades, structured in the form of a great brise-soleil . The enormous roof consists of two slightly arched surfaces with inward slope, supported by inverted beams that rest on a regular series of laminar columns; both gradients lead the rainwater into a system of elevated cisterns with an overflow canal that evacuates them to gargoyles at the ends. Under the large roof the program deploys as an urban world of small independent buildings interacting with circulations and interstitial spaces, on one hand arranging the classrooms in a continuous block on one side, and on the other half more freely arranged around a central covered patio, the administration, services, labs and special classrooms with free-standing shapes, and the music room covered by an elliptical paraboloid. The smooth slope of the site also made it possible to form three successive platforms, one higher for the linear layout of the classrooms, one slightly lower on the sides and a series of steps in correspondence with the central columns that overflows on the level of the covered central patio and continues to the outer patio. The missionary school represents an infrastructural concept in which spatial generation -between a very defined roof and a neutral ground- results from the absence of functional layout conditioning due to the architectural capabilities of the roof.
25
Made with FlippingBook Annual report maker