Spanish architect Andrés Jaque's Office for Political Innovation has completed a school near Madrid that aims to be as colourful and playful as a child's imagination.
Located in Encinar de los Reyes, on the northern outskirts of the Spanish capital, Reggio School is a six-storey building featuring cork walls, concrete arches, porthole windows and zigzagging roofs.
Inside, classrooms and other teaching spaces are interspersed with indoor gardens.
Reggio School features cork walls, concrete arches and zigzagging roofs
Jaque ? who is dean of Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture as well as the founder of New York-based Office for Political Innovation ? describes it as "a complex ecosystem" for education.
"Avoiding homogenisation and unified standards, the architecture of the school aims to become a multiverse where the layered complexity of the environment becomes readable and experiential," the studio said. "It operates as an assemblage of different climates, ecosystems, architectural traditions and regulations."
Cork serves as both exterior surface and thermal insulation
The Reggio school model was pioneered in Reggio Emilia, northern Italy, where a series of preschools promote child-led rather than adult-dictated forms of learning.
Based on a concept developed in the 1940s by educator Loris Malaguzzi, these schools offer more scope for creativity and imagination than traditional learning environments.
The building is partiall...