Walden Dos School

Realised by Miguel Montor in Mexico, the school has direct connection with gardens, thus enabling outdoor activities during any class as well as keeping in touch with the green areas.

Miguel Montor, Walden Dos School, Huixquilucan, Mexico, 2016
Walden Dos School is located in a highly commercial and constantly growing area; its facilities offer daycare and kindergarten. The site is an urban node, limited by one of the most important avenues of the area on the front and by a river on the back, which makes pedestrian transit almost impossible. Additionally, the surroundings include many vertical-housing buildings that block natural sunlight from the project, at different times of day.

 

The project is based on the renovation, recovery and enlargement of a pre-existing school that needed a new architectural design to fit the new owner’s educational program. Children travel across courtyards, halls, classrooms and gardens, weaving the pre-existing spaces with the new ones. These spaces are constantly flooded with natural light, which allows them to transform throughout the day and become different places every hour. Such spaces are replacing old and dark hallways that are now sunbathed gardens that offer a variety of experiences.

Miguel Montor, Walden Dos School, Huixquilucan, Mexico, 2016
Miguel Montor, Walden Dos School, Huixquilucan, Mexico, 2016
Multiple perforations made along the building provide a sense of orientation, allowing constant visual connection between the inside and the outside, thus giving its users a feeling of safety, which is essential for the proper function of any school. Most of the classrooms were designed to have direct connection with the courtyard – gardens, thus enabling outdoor activities during any class as well as keeping in touch with nature.

Walden Dos School, Huixquilucan, Mexico
Program: school
Architect: Miguel Montor
Design team: Mónica Mateos, Francisco Iván Bustillos
Collaborators: Regina De Hoyos, Paloma Envila, Juan Manuel Armendáriz, Aremi Miranda, Ana Laura Cardoso, Sebastián Bidault
Contractor: Lorenzo Farfán Villegas
Landscape: Taller de paisaje entorno – Tontatiuh Martínez, Hugo Sánchez, Renata Gallegos
Area: 1,335 sqm
Completion: 2016

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