Students and teachers worked together to prepare a description of what they would like their new Primary to have. This brief was shared with all of the architecture companies who submitted an entry in the competition to design our school.
Click here to read the full brief.
Children should be happy and love coming to school. They can work and learn in a wide variety of ways and be in positions to choose how this happens. This includes play and climbing trees as well as studying and contacting peers around the world.
In general, we want children and adults to have as much immediate access to the exterior of buildings as possible. In the current school, you need to go outside to get from any one room to another, we see that as a positive feature in a city with no rainfall! This can be achieved with playgrounds, always terraces or any other feature, but it is important.
We envisage a school where children have the space and the facility to do a wide range of different activities and link these together. They could be model making in Maths, painting in Geography, Dancing in English or building in Science. Activities are not defined by the subject and so they must be available at all times.
This means that while we have areas where they can sit and work at a desk, the opportunity to go to a maker space, or a theatre or a sound stage is easy and natural. Evidence of achievement can be by object, artifact, exhibition, art work, play, song, website or blog. There need to be lots of opportunities for these to be displayed, exhibited or performed. Lots of spaces that may be corridors but could be exhibitions, may be staircases but could be seating for performances.
Even within the seated conventional working area, there is space for different situations with stools, chairs, standing desks bean bags and tiered seating. Different sizes and styles of places where students and staff can sit and read, work or discuss in different sized groups would be everywhere. This includes places for individuals that are private without being secret, isolated but not cut off!
Access means that rooms have open faces. “No room with more than three walls” as Stephen Heppell says. Classrooms can be open clusters, but we don’t want rectangles, partly for the sound and partly for the boredom. So non right angles or better still, some curves! It goes without saying that we need access everywhere for everyone, and the challenge is to keep this within interesting variations of level.
Light and ventilation are vital for learning and the building must take into consideration local climatic conditions and changes. There should also be good sound absorption in the materials and design of walls and roofs.
Students of different ages need to be brought together in different ways. It should not be possible for the older children to avoid mixing with the younger ones. Opportunities for blending should be encouraged by the architecture, which should create necessary crossovers and blends. The flexibility should allow us to change the way we place kids or put them together. By this we mean that we could swap grade 2 and grade 5 if we wanted, or do more mixed age teaching without the architecture inhibiting this in any way.
We need all we have now, but also a swimming pool, a cafeteria, a gym, a small theatre space / black box, a recording studio, a film studio, a fitness centre a dance studio. Some of these may be the same place but used flexibly.
The staff common room should not be hidden away from students and should be easy to access. Furniture and design must promote staff interaction, some spaces for small meetings, a working space. An assistant space attached to the staff common room.
The Library / media centre / students centre. Flexible spaces for students to read, play board games, watch videos, listen to music, all of these in groups or on their own. Lots of light and views.
Certain facilities need to be positioned so that they can be shared by the Early Years school on the same site. These include the auditorium, the pool and possibly the staffroom. Some of the green areas or pitches are also shared.
We want the school to have an iconic and identifiable design that makes the school known everywhere and is a badge of how far we have gone to make something really special.
Management of the transport problems of the site is important. We need an underground car park and drop off areas for cars and buses that are off the road.
Ideally we would like no carbon footprint and a school that contributes rather than takes from the national grid. Environmetal considerations are important for this building as they are for any modern building, but for us they are an important part of the education process as well. We want children to learn to consider the environment from the building that they are in.
IDOM is an independent multinational company that offers professional integrated services in Consulting, Engineering and Architecture around the world.
Rosan Bosch Studio works with design to empower and motivate learners across the globe. We create playful learning spaces and innovative schools for creative and critical thinkers.
Early in 2020, we decided to start on this project and engaged MACE as our project managers. MACE are internationally renowned and have recent experience in Peru leading the project to build the sites for the Pan-American Games of 2019.
With their guidance we opened a competition for architects from around the world to design our school. Over 20 teams of architects submitted entries, and these were reduced to a shortlist of 5 teams. Each team had a local element, because we knew we needed Peruvian expertise to design a building that would fit here and be allowed. Each team also had an international element because we wanted to open the design to the most recent experience and creativity from around the world.
The winning bid is a combination of IDOM and ROSANBOSCH.
Following a rigorous process, De Vicente Constructora (DVC) has been awarded the contract to build the new Primary at Markham´s Monterrico campus. The timeline for completion is 16 months, meaning an estimated completion in early 2024.
De Vicente Constructora (DVC) is part of Grupo Flesan, a diversified company that, thanks to the synergy of its multiple companies specialising in engineering, construction, and real estate, has been providing expert services and excellence to the most important industries in Peru since 2012. DVC, founded in Chile in 2007, has the professional and technical capacity to provide solutions in management, NEC contracts, preliminary works, civil works, building, collaborative BIM, after-sales, and more; serving retail, industrial, housing, hotel, educational, and health, among others.
It has executed Priority Education Projects (PPE), within the government plan developed by the Authority for Reconstruction with Change (ARCC), benefiting 11 thousand families in Peru.
It provides excellence and certified quality (ISO 9001:2015), always aiming for continuous improvement under high safety standards (ISO 45001) and respecting environmental regulations (ISO 14001:2015). They have ISO 37.001 certification in Anti-bribery Management Systems. Drives the Digital Transformation of the sector through constant innovation, modern methodologies, and cutting-edge technologies involved in each production process; automating operations and keeping an online control of machinery and works, to achieve optimal results within the agreed deadlines and budgets.
