English for Fun

Lorena del Río e Iñaqui Carnicero from Rica Studio designed the flagship school of English for Fun, in Madrid. The school promotes learning through the five senses and the design had to boost kid’s creativity and imagination.  

  The architects first studied the Reggio Emilia approach, based in a self guided and very open interpretation of learning, based on the principles that children should be an active part of the learning process, the built environment is considered a teacher itself and the learning process should be visible. 

The goal was to create a space in the spirit of the adventure playgrounds where the play-objects, not toys, develop their full potential through the interaction with the kids. The design operates both at an adult and kid’s scale, with spaces that only children can inhabit and own. The space is divided by a thick structure instead of thin partitions, to configure the class room space, an inhabitable wall that can storage furniture, making the reconfiguration of the class very easy. 

The main element is a generic module that can be used in multiple ways, transforming the corridor into a showcase of the learning process, blurring the limits between the classrooms, and expanding the perception of the space, without any conventional compartmentalization of the classrooms.

English for Fun flagship, Madrid, Spain
Program: school
Architects: Rica Studio, Lorena del Río, Iñaqui Carnicero
Team: Takuma Johnson, Monica Molinari, Paula Manzano
Area: 1,050 sqm
Completion: 2016