The monochrome, mosaic-clad classrooms at this preschool in Santa Marta, Colombia, are grouped into modular clusters around triangular courtyards.

Local architects el Equipo de Mazzanti designed the Timayui Kindergarten as an open-source project, hoping the format will be repeated in other communities.

The three concrete blocks that comprise each module contain bathrooms, two classrooms and a flexible open room, which surround each central courtyard like the petals of a flower.

The clusters are orientated to maximise natural ventilation and daylight, while each individual block features a tapered asymmetric roof.

Other unusual kindergartens we’ve featured include one with a curving concrete orifice and another with pyramidal chimneys – take a look at them all here.

Here’s a longer description from el Equipo de Mazzanti:

PRE SCHOOL FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD IN TIMAYUI,
SANTA MARTA, COLOMBIA.

1 – PROGRAM REQUIREMENTS AND PRECONDITIONS

This project is part of the political concerns of the municipality of Santa Marta and the Carulla Foundation to improve the educational and nutritional conditions of the communities displaced by violence, and settled on the outside perimeter of the city. It is meant to develop infrastructure to improve the conditions of early childhood and low-income neighbourhoods to the most vulnerable population between ages of 0 to 5 years old. These areas are characterised by violence and lack of public infrastructure.

This project encourages and develops children, and supplies a balanced and dignified diet to help improve psychomotor conditions of children for their later developments.

2 – THE PRESCHOOL AS A MECHANISM OF SOCIAL INCLUSION

The challenge as architects in a context like Colombia is to develop projects that can generate social inclusion. The problem lies not only in designing and constructing buildings in deteriorated areas, but to activate new forms of use, ownership and pride in the communities.
The value of architecture lies not only in itself but on what it produces. To define these arguments it is necessary to extend our gaze beyond the architecture itself. Architecture cannot only relate to itself, but widening our gaze and finding new ways to operate, to resist and be better equipped to meet the current conditions. Therefore it is necessary to transfer knowledge from other professions as dissimilar as they are, because they are likely to enable us to find more efficient and logical ways to infer in reality, issues and concerns that nurture our labor as architects and to do acting architecture. (Defined by what they do and not by their essence.)

We define some strategies used in the project that are part of the objectives of our workshop that allow us to build architecture in deteriorated areas to act and also to be used in multiple ways by their inhabitants, but especially, by allowing them to become an element of pride and transformation in the communities where they are inserted.

Architecture is action. We aim to develop the performative capacities of architecture rather than its representational abilities or visual qualities. This is why we are interested in an architecture defined by what it does and not by its substance (“Architecture is not an end in itself” Cedric Price). We would induce action, effects, events, environments, allowing us to develop ways of patterns or material organisations that act directly to induce and to build social actions with the users, an Architecture capable of inducing new behaviours and relationships among the inhabitants of these abandoned and deteriorated areas.

Open Architecture. This interest has not lead us to find open architectures capable of changing and adapting to new social and cultural challenges. We are interested in organisational systems made of parts or modules as an intelligent organisational mechanism, which is not closed or finished. Their adaptive capacity allows them to grow or adapt to diverse situations, thus allowing us to develop various models based on the same rules of organisation that can be repeated in different places of the city, making more economical and sustainable projects.

Multiply use. The Indeterminacy as a design strategy allows us to think that our Architecture is capable of multiplying the uses for which it was originally intended to (not as effectiveness, but as a pledge of new relationships). The disposition and configuration of the buildings cannot leave places not defined functionally, this means that communities can own and multiply the initial use.

Meaningful architecture. We seek to transfer conditions of the consolidated city to the periphery and deteriorated areas in which we operate. Public buildings in these zones must be identified by the communities as state presence and assistance elements of social transformation This is why we seek to develop meaningful architecture, with provisions to involve the inhabitants of the area so that they feel part of an equal society, allowing high levels of ownership and pride in the communities where our buildings are inserted.

We seek and we believe that the buildings designed in the office can become forms of social inclusion to help improve the quality factors of life and economic competitive in deteriorated poverty areas in Colombia, aiming to promote social welfare and to build a more equal and sustainable society as the ultimate goal of Architecture.

3 – JUSTIFICATION OF THE URBAN INTEGRATION OF THE PROPOSAL

The building is conceived as a visible structure, a landmark building, representing a symbol of the neighbourhood, as a primary element of the area, which by its form is different from the context that surrounds it, with no context and urban planning this will become an agglutinating element of pride for the community.

The image of the building refers to the geography of the region, rather than an object. We intend to develop an architectural landscape building that is related to the geography and topography, where it is inserted. We find rules of organisation to develop projects that promote a “new natural contract” by reformulating the relationship between figure and background, an approach in search of alternatives capable of promoting that “new natural contract” in tune with a landscape and a natural order.

The modules are implemented as a field of three-petalled flowers that are chained and distributed, allowing maximum use of the lot area designed for the preschool, an open project, with yards that are connected with the interior-exterior in a smooth way.

Click above for larger image

4 – JUSTIFICATION OF ADOPTED OR ORGANISATIONAL SOLUTIONS, ADAPTIVE MODULES AND SYSTEMS

The System

Our project is