This unique educational system sustains that children are innate learners and should be given the most freedom possible. A Montessori class is equipped with materials designed for the student´s self-directed learning.  The role of the teacher is to watch over the environment to remove any obstacles that may interfere with the students´ natural development. The building should therefore impose as few physical constraints as possible on the children´s freedom of movement and sight; yet allow the teachers to keep close supervision. The children should always feel free, but never insecure.

The parti for the project has proven successful. The building´s floor plan is a perfect square. On its corners are classrooms, also squares, their interior corners truncated to form balconies. In these balconies tiny students can “work” while seeing and being seen. The balconies´ edges describe in turn another square, rotated and inscribed inside the first, which acts as a central atrium. In its center we find the octagon of the fountain and its circular water basin. This geometric play points towards the ancient problem of the quadrature of the circle, symbolically the union of heaven and earth. The fountain´s running water bathes everything in its white noise, bringing further harmony to this small cosmos.

Project Facts

Project  Montessori Preschool

Site  Escazú

Client The Blue Valley School

Area  745m2

Architect   Anna Urbina Gutiérrez

Engineering  Juan Francisco Montealegre  (Structural Concrete),  Marija Romanjek (Structural Wood),  Javier Álvarez (Electrical),  José Elmer Arias (Mechanical), RAE Ingenieros (Construction)

Date  May 2001