Centro educativo en la parroquia de Zámbiza

Abstract

The parish of Zámbiza is a parish with a small population and is limited by the topography of the site in the growth of the urban sprawl. It is also one of the first rural parishes in the city of Quito, and therefore has a variety of spaces of historical importance to the city and the inhabitants of the area. Within Zámbiza, in addition to the heritage sites, the inhabitants have developed attachments to several places within this parish of contemporary construction. One of these important places is the Pedro Luis Calero Educational Unit. The educational unit represents a space of great symbolic value for the parish, as it was the first school established in the area, an incentive for the clergy who at that time sought to teach literacy and trades to small rural villages. Since then, and up to the present, the school has grown thanks to the support of the community. Another important institution for residents is the Centro Infantil del Buen Vivir (CIVB) Reino Infantil (Children’s Center for Good Living), which emerged with the support of the Fundamor Foundation as a daycare center to support working mothers in the parish. It has evolved thanks to donations. In both cases, the informal nature of the growth and maintenance of these facilities has led to irregular development with little technical control or planning, resulting in poorly organized spaces and a lack of necessary learning spaces for children and adolescents. Given this situation, there is a need to reconfigure the spatial layout and delimit spaces for public use and for student use. The proposal seeks not only to provide a functional educational environment but also to consolidate spaces for meeting and social development for residents. Both institutions also share a community green space, whose access also involves the Parish GAD (Parish Decentralized Administration of Development), which has generated functional and land-use confusion in this central area of the parish. The redesign proposal not only responds to current pedagogical requirements but also aims to enhance spaces for social gathering and development for the residents of Zámbiza, integrating architecture, education, and community into a proposal consistent with the physical and symbolic environment of the site. The project focuses on the redesign of public educational spaces in the parish of Zámbiza, with the goal of integrating two existing educational units and creating an infrastructure that meets current special and programmatic needs. This educational space not only seeks to improve learning conditions but also to respect the symbolic and heritage value of the surrounding buildings.