Font Romeu-Odeillo-Via School Complex by RCR Arquitectes

DATE

18.02.2026

The project groups together a nursery, a kindergarten, and a primary school in a single ensemble conceived to serve three municipali-ties, constructing a unitary environment where the architecture adapts to the scale of the children and establishes a direct relationship with the landscape.
The intervention is developed on a single floor, avoiding stairs and favoring accessibility and spatial continuity. The classrooms are arranged as semi-buried volumes in the slope, protected by a continuous green roof that prolongs the existing topography. This stra-tegy allows the building to remain embedded in the terrain, reducing its visual impact and improving its thermal behavior, while simul-taneously opening the facades toward the south to guarantee sunlight and views toward the landscape. Architecture is thus conceived as a prolongation of the ground, where the limit between building and nature becomes blurred.

An element that is fundamental to understanding the project is the interior street that runs longitudinally through the complex, articula-ting the different programs and connecting the access with the sports hall situated at the opposite end. This space acts as an axis of relationship, as well as a place of transition where the section varies to adapt to the different needs of lighting and use. At an intermedia-te point, this street opens to a covered courtyard that functions as a protected space against the climatic conditions of the mountain, allowing for meeting and play even on days of snow or rain.

The materiality of the building reinforces this will of integration with the environment. While the south-facing facades open through large glazed surfaces that introduce natural light into the interior, the sides and the roof are resolved with finishes of local granite gravel. This material choice allows for accentuating the tectonic character of the building, where the architecture is perceived as a construction rooted to the terrain, closer to a geological condition than to an autonomous object.

In this project, RCR Arquitectes constructs an architecture based on the continuity between space, matter, and landscape. The building is conceived as an intervention that emerges from the terrain and establishes a direct relationship with light, topography, and use. The result is a clear, luminous, and open space, where the architecture acts as a support for daily life, allowing the children’s experience to develop in close connection with the natural environment. More than an object, the school complex becomes a place, where architecture and landscape form a single reality.

MARCH VALENCIA | ARQUITECTURA Y DISEÑO

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