Severí Torres School was built in 1955 and functioned as a school until 2020. In the year 2021, the process began for a new use as a day centre for the elderly, a day facility for social and health care where they can receive specialised care and develop their daily life activities with greater autonomy. It was up to us to draw up a preliminary project that would lay the foundations for the future project. 

It is a longitudinal volume in a north-south direction formed by two floors with a markedly rationalist composition, the result of the architecture of the time. Between its construction and the present day it has undergone various maintenance reforms, but it was in the 1980s when a more far-reaching intervention modified its volumetry, eliminating part of the first floor and replacing the ceramic tile roof with a lacquered metal sheet.

The constructive solutions pursued with the proposal aim to be simple, economical and respectful of the pre-existence. The project is aware that the building, over time, has had some slight deficiencies. In spite of all this, rehabilitation is proposed as a mechanism for rooting and inserting an architectural proposal in a built environment. 

The intervention on the envelope is carried out jointly on the building as a whole: roof, façades and floor, both to respond to the environment in which it is situated and to adapt it to the new programme and to the technical and regulatory requirements that this new use demands.

The architectural structure of the original building, clear and ordered, with the layout of the main entrances in the centre and the distribution of the rooms in a “comb” by means of a corridor that allows access to all the spaces, has allowed the building to be adapted in a very clear way and to have the required programme on the ground floor, differentiated into the three very specific areas defined by the current regulations: access area, general services area and specialised care area.

On a programmatic level, the intervention is different on the ground floor than on the first floor. Although on the first floor all the existing elements inside the building are demolished to leave an open-plan floor where only the installations are left to be used in the future, it is on the ground floor where the greatest intervention takes place. It was completely remodelled to improve accessibility and to have a more direct and closer relationship of use and views between the interior and the exterior.

To achieve this, a walkway was built attached to the main façade, allowing it to become a relationship space where the uses that take place inside the building can be extended to the outside. It is a protected space that allows outdoor activities to be carried out and to walk around without leaving the building in an environment of trust and tranquillity surrounded by vegetation. 

At the same time, in the old school playground there will be areas for living, games for all ages and green areas in order to gain comfortable and quality spaces for the users of the centre and their families.