Imagine Montessori School by Gradolí & Sanz: A Nature-Integrated Educational Architecture in Paterna, Spain

Located in Paterna, on the outskirts of Valencia, the Imagine Montessori School by Gradolí & Sanz Arquitectes is a groundbreaking educational project that redefines how children experience learning environments. Completed in 2019, the school spans nearly 19,827 ft² and represents the first phase of a larger master plan designed to grow organically over time.

This first phase includes 10 classrooms, kitchen facilities, and storage areas, while the upcoming second phase will expand with administration offices, meeting rooms, and faculty spaces. At its core, the project embraces the Montessori philosophy, where spatial freedom, nature integration, and child-scaled design foster curiosity, independence, and holistic growth.

A School Rooted in Its Territory

The building sits along the edge of the Valterna residential area, between the community and the natural ravine of En Dolça. This geographical position became a defining element of the design. Rather than turning away from the ravine, the architects embraced it as an ecological and cultural asset.

The main entrance is placed on the ravine side rather than the congested city road. This strategic decision not only mitigates traffic but also prepares the school for the future development of the La Pinada neighborhood, ensuring smooth accessibility for families.

Arrival: A Journey Through Nature

Approaching the school is more than a simple drop-off. Children enter by crossing a pine forest via raised wooden walkways, allowing them to peek at the school through treetops. This gentle transition replaces the traditional iron gate with an immersive experience that prepares children mentally for the day ahead. Parents, too, benefit from shaded resting areas along the pathway, transforming school arrival into a moment of calm connection with nature.

Interior Design: Flexible Learning Environments

The building is shaped like an S-curve, creating two distinct outdoor spaces: a west-facing entrance plaza and an east-facing playground. This dual orientation provides flexibility, daylight variation, and unique gathering opportunities.

Every classroom opens to views of the pine forest and ravine, ensuring that nature is always present as the central focus of learning. In line with Montessori principles, classrooms are divided into five core activity zones:

• Sensory area
• Practical life area
• Language area
• Mathematics area
• Cultural studies area

Each classroom is entered through a low-arched lobby with benches and lockers, emphasizing spaces designed for children’s scale. Additional features such as triple-height solar collectors enhance daylight and ventilation while visually connecting classrooms across the building.

Classrooms also extend outdoors, each with a covered terrace, small amphitheater, water fountain, and deciduous tree. This seasonal interaction ensures children experience natural cycles as part of their daily education.

Outdoor Spaces: Learning Beyond the Walls

Instead of artificial playgrounds, the outdoor areas celebrate wild nature. Children play with pinecones, branches, roots, and seasonal mushrooms. The terrain itself becomes a learning tool, with slopes transformed into slides, climbing walls, ramps, and caves.

There are no soccer fields or formal sports courts—instead, the emphasis is on egalitarian play, calm exploration, and community interaction. Even heavy rainfall is celebrated, allowing children to observe natural water flows through the ravine.

Materiality: Sustainability and Honesty in Construction

The school is built using terracotta and wood, materials chosen for their ecological value and tactile warmth. Terracotta appears in the load-bearing walls, brick vaults, and pavements, while wood defines the ceilings, wall cladding, and carpentry.

Rejecting artificial finishes, the architects exposed the building’s true structure:

• No false ceilings or hidden panels.
• Visible installations that reveal how the school works.
• Brick walls functioning simultaneously as structure, cladding, and partition.

This didactic honesty turns the building itself into a teaching material, showing children how architecture is constructed.

Crowning the project is a green roof, an undulating meadow that provides insulation, water management, and visual integration with the surrounding landscape. When the second phase is completed, the green mantle will extend seamlessly into the perimeter fence, allowing the architecture to dissolve into nature.

Architecture as a Montessori Experience

Every detail of Imagine Montessori School reflects child-centric spatial design: hidden lofts, small alcoves, and scaled-down windows create sanctuaries that adults cannot access but children can claim as their own. These micro-spaces, scattered throughout the building, embody the essence of Montessori education—freedom within structure, discovery within design.

All photographs are works of Mariela Apollonio, Bruno Almela