4th Municipal Nursery School of Glyfada

Urban village

One of the greatest challenges in the design and construction of the Municipal Nursery School of Glyfada was to reassert the architect’s role as a key contributor in the creation of a new public building.

 

Prefabrication System

A second challenge lay in foregrounding the prefabrication system selected for the building’s implementation. The entire structure was transported from the production factory, and the total construction time amounted to six months. The prefabrication system, defined by the competition’s prerequisites, significantly shaped the building’s form, as the basic module had to be transportable by truck.

 

 

Design Philosophy

The central idea of the project was for the nursery school to respond to the scale of its users and to reproduce a model of an urban village, while a key compositional element was the archetypal image of a house as perceived by a child. Its repetition defined the new units, such as the classroom, which consists of three modules, and ultimately the entirety of the nursery school complex.

The competition brief required a single-storey structure, a prefabricated system, and a building footprint equal to the total built area. The limited internal communal spaces of the nursery are a direct outcome of these provisions.

 

 

Materials & Sustainability

The nursery school was designed so that all classrooms have three free sides, arranged around a central courtyard, while smaller patios create internal vistas from the shared spaces.

An effort was made for simple materials and conventional construction methods to produce a distinctive composition with a low energy footprint. The internal walls were constructed with a thickness of 10 cm in order to maximize interior space, while the external walls and roofs were clad with external insulation – a relatively bold approach, as it had not previously been implemented in Greece. In this way, together with the construction of pergolas from marine plywood and, naturally, the careful placement of openings, the building operates sustainably, creating conditions of comfort for the children’s activities.

Planting will soon become a fundamental component of the composition, as large plane trees will provide shade to the central courtyard and other trees will accentuate the distinct character of each season.

 

 

The project received a Distinction at the 2017 Hellenic Institute of Architecture (HIA) Architecture Awards, in the category of Public and Communal Buildings.