Nursery School Papagos
2023, Athens
Type: Architectural Competition
Prize: 1st Follow-up prize
Size: 600 m²
Status: Ideas-drafts
The proposal is based on highlighting and cultivating the sensory and mental relationship of children with architecture, through the processing of light, materiality, tactility, archetypal shapes and typologies of the natural space.The new building design is directly linked to its materiality and construction method: the starting point of the composition is based on the utilization of a system that simultaneously satisfies functional, construction and aesthetic requirements. The structure of the children’s game of “tic tac toe” is transferred to a three-dimensional spatial system of walls as the main structure of the building, which – like the structure of the game – offers variations, sequences and alternations of spaces. The idea of tic tac toe is spatially expressed through the composition of vertical walls of visible bricks that intersect in a canvas (constructional, spatial and functional) of a 3×4 grid.Through the system of intersecting vertical walls, the functional units, the movement diagram and the relationship between full and empty space are organized in a very easy-to-understand way, while the “corridors” of movement are minimized. The solid walls act as comprehensible “filters” of transition from one unit to another.The choice of the wall material from visible optical bricks is also based on the intention of appropriation and understanding of the space by the children through the highlighting of the construction structure. Thus, the brick walls are imprinted in the children’s memory and as the “sign” of their school.
Architects: Giannis Papadopoulos, Georgia Daskalaki,
Architecture student: Vassilis Papadopoulos
