Andrés jaque takes an unconventional approach to design and construction at madrid's colegio reggio
- Vol.211(1), Jan
- New York BNP Media 2023
- 60-65p.
“When you dream with other people, you go so much further!” laughs Eva Martín, principal of the Colegio Reggio in Madrid. “It’s far better than what you could have imagined alone,” she says of the four-year “journey” she and the teachers and parents undertook to build their school with New York/Madrid-based Office for Political Innovation (OFFPOLINN)—the architecture firm founded by Andrés Jaque, the new dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Iberian pioneers of the Reggio Emilia alternative-education approach, Martín and company opened Spain’s first Reggio school in 2009, in rented accommodations, but eventually needed a purpose-built home to comply with government regulations. There was more to it than mere bureaucracy, though, since the Reggio method sees the environment as the “third teacher,” alongside adults—parents and professional educators—and other children (the impact of the social group in learning). The building in which schooling takes place is therefore of prime importance.