A Challenge to the Creativity of Learning in the Colombian Atlantic | CDI Department of Atlantico by Giancarlo Mazzanti

AUTHOR: Cristian Galvis

More than being an architect, I like to dream of the unthinkable, so I invite you to analyze creatively and get to know a little of my vision.

NAME OF WORK: 21 Child Development Centers “CDI”.

AUTHORS: Mazzanti Team (Giancarlo Mazzanti).

PHOTOGRAPHY: Alejandro Arango and Alfonso Manjarres, El Equipo Mazzanti.

LOCATION: Atlántico, Colombia.

YEAR: 2016

CLIENT: Government of Atlántico.

Remember when you would come home from school, throw all your toys on the floor and just play without thinking about how messy it looked or if one toy looked good next to the other?

I remember that it only mattered what fantastic story I was going to imagine in my head with all of them. Well, studies show that the stage between zero and five years old; for many experts who have conducted research in several countries around the world, is considered a fundamental cycle for the development of human beings. What is achieved during this stage will last forever. Now that I have told you a little about what this is all about, I will begin to tell you about the CDI.

The CDI are spaces designed for the integral attention to early childhood, where children from 0 to 5 years old receive initial education, balanced nutrition, preventive health, psychological support and creative stimulation. The proposal of the CDI Department of Atlantico proposes a design of 21 Child Development Centers for the department of Atlantico, in different urban and semi-urban locations in 18 different small towns located in the rural area of the department, which are characterized by poverty and lack of educational spaces and especially for early childhood. Now then, I invite you to think; if knowledge could go beyond being enclosed in 4 walls...

Would it then be easier to explore the world of learning?

The Mazzanti team manages to combine 2 adjectives that in my opinion are fascinating, adaptive and associative, rather than a finished and closed architecture, they propose the development of open systems; composed of modules and patterns of association; able to adapt to the most diverse situations, whether topographical, urban or programmatic. Generating buildings willing to grow and change according to particular circumstances.

The response to the context:

To face the climate conditions and the topography of the Atlantic, the project is elevated to a height that varies between 75 cm or more depending on the terrain. This ensures that in flood areas the building is protected against possible disasters and also helps to reduce the contact area of the modules with the ground which produces less heat exchange, additionally this favors the building to have a prudent isolation from the street ensuring the care of children.

Of a purpose to change the world:

This project of multiple classrooms, vegetable gardens, toy libraries and children's recreation, seeks to provide a solution to a problem and is more a prototype of social impact than a building. Covering educational needs, it is a potentiator of social change and urban regeneration that aims to promote conditions that improve the quality of life not only of early childhood but also of a large number of neighbors, proposing spaces for collective use that aim to become landmarks for the community.

As this is a project designed with a modular system, the enclosed spaces are presented as independent and self-sufficient modules, articulated by circulation ribbons and large gaps for play and transit, adapting their shape and thus having a quick and easy construction process.

The school space as a learning mechanism:

Children are the main user, so this architectural solution was based on the technical, functional and formal conditions of educational buildings. The value of school architecture must be able to foster development in terms of behavior and relationships for children. Spaces that allow diversity and multiplicity of experiences for learning and exchange for each of the members of the school community. A child is not interested in inhabiting or getting quickly through a corridor from one classroom to another and be more efficient, it is stronger the notion of experience and experience.

A winding corridor full of experiences becomes a more important educational tool. This proposal presents a deconstruction of the conventional school space, which has been based on efficiency and utility under a foundation of surveillance and control. I now believe that, for learning, the premise that imagination and freedom are the most powerful tools is strengthened.

Diagramming as a structuring axis:

Accept it, it is as if you had thrown your lego ́s on the floor and from there this great and particular idea was formed, the preschool system seeks to reflect and wonders about an open, unfinished and pluri-vocational architecture; that allows to adapt to spatial and social changes. The basis of a diagram is the dynamics of adaptation, whether topographical, urban, social or programmatic behavior. The diagram is the project, the process is the project; with this statement I intend to conclude this text and explain how a proposal gave a creative response to the various natural ways of organizing each of the 21 preschools, as if it were a game.

The child's space is made of fluids, waves, migrations, vibrations, gradients, thresholds, connections, distributions, steps, intensities, conjugations. The child's space functions as a fabulous destabilization machine and comes from a unitary and organized space. Children's places come to serve to signify other things, from a space of positions it becomes a space of situations.” - Manuel Delgado