Dominican School of Vistabella

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Civil architecture · Year: 1970 · Authors: Fray Francisco Coello de Portugal y Acuña

After having carried out their work in Las Palmas, La Laguna and La Palma, the Dominican Missionaries of the Holy Family settled in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1928, beginning their teaching activity on Emilio Calzadilla Street, with a school named Santa Catalina de Siena. Later they moved, due to space reasons, to a larger building located at 48 Santa Rosalía Street. They remained there until 1970, when the new Vistabella school was inaugurated, on the edge of the main road from Santa Cruz to La Laguna. 

The new facility was designed in 1968 by Fray Francisco Coello de Portugal y Acuña, a Dominican priest and architect, who at that time was also working on the plans for the Dominican school of La Laguna, Santa Rosa de Lima, located today on the San Miguel de Geneto road. 

 Fray Francisco Coello, a technician fully involved in the architectural ideas of the modern movement, conceived for the sloping Vistabella site a set of classrooms, administrative centres, sports courts and chapel, arranged on terraces enclosed by magnificent concrete planters. Each section has wonderful views over the city. The natural orientation of these terraces made it necessary, for lighting reasons, to make a slight turn on the eastern part of the structure, thus giving the entire composition a slight serpentine shape that helps the independence of some classrooms from adjacent ones, as well as between levels.

Inside, the modular composition of the communication systems, both vertical and the long horizontal corridors, together with the solidity of the different volumes, result in a clear vision where, spatially, everything functions rationally and simply.

The Dominican School of Vistabella is a magnificent construction work in which the values of austerity and modesty, characteristic of the religious order, interact with advanced and avant-garde architectural concepts.

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