Pupils asked for a building without walls that was like a garden and a spaceship. The dazzling result, housed within a living skin for insects and fungi, is one of the most inventive schools ever built
‘It looks like a robot made of butter,” was one pupil’s reaction when they saw their new school for the first time. They were not wrong. Standing on the northern outskirts of Madrid, in the suburb of Encinar de los Reyes, the Reggio school is a surreal sight, rising from its sloping plot like a big, buttery machine for learning.
Lumpy, yellowish, room-sized blocks appear to be stacked up on a frame of concrete shelves, with rows of beady bubble windows bursting through their gungey surfaces, like eyes emerging from the gloop. The blocks leave gaps where lush gardens sprout, while polished metal ducts poke up from the zigzag rooftop, like the chimneys of a cartoon factory. Down below, the concrete base is sliced open with gaping arches, stretched wide and squeezed tight, as if the building is flexing its muscles.
