College of Higher Education Vorselaar
Maxime Szyf, Maximal Design
I was blown away when I came here for the first time. Design is important for people as it creates added value and makes things happen. And what do I mean by that ? Stu-dents used to go to the city a lot, often had lunch in pubs and skipped classes. That was before this project and using this building. In the meantime they had to order more chairs as people like it here that much. And it seems to work.
John Maes, head of department KHK-Vorselaar
In here you can't have the feeling you're at school. In here you need to have the feeling that you're doing things together with friends and you learn from that. That's why we started a project four years ago.
That project includes a meeting place, a cafeteria and a contemporary library. We call this an educational workspace, that's typical of a teacher course.
The design of the last stage is a coincidence. It actually was our intention to design this ourselves. Typical. You have an architectural group design and build something, and then you think about contacting a number of furniture suppliers. But we didn't like that. Every time we came to the conclusion that all proposals only meant one thing: this would become a furniture warehouse. We wouldn't create the living environment we in-tended. And that's when we went to see an interior designer. In the very final stages. We already had a clear functional framework. That's what we offered.
Maxime Szyf, Maximal Design
Students on this course in the Campine have the feeling the city is far away. That's why we wanted to bring in an urban oasis where a lot is happening. This might be the first time they're faced with a lot of different things. That should continue,
they should be able to learn from that.
If you have a clear idea about that urban oasis in this educational project, and you carry it out consistently, it becomes a whole. Then you bring in one concept in this building, in this existing framework. I think that's common sense, to fit this in logically and consis-tently.
John Maes, head of department KHK-Vorselaar
It's obvious we want to put the teacher in the world, far from the church tower. We're close to the church tower, but actually we want to let go. That's the paradox that can be found here.
A city is a network, a network where people take different roads and routes. We had to think of the metropolis London and then we thought of the underground.
Maxime Szyf, Maximal Design
We started from the map of the underground and we wanted to translate that into the entire building, to introduce the signs, the colours and the shapes. That symbolizes how you show people the way in their lives and education, you show them how they become teachers.
Here we tried to implement the colour scheme as well as possible. The railway signs, the tube lines which can be found in the city's underground. This means that all bases, all chair legs, all table frames have the six colours of those tube lines. They add a nice colourful contrast and playful image to the austere framework.
John Maes, head of department KHK-Vorselaar
It's our opinion all cultures should live together. That will become more important for our students who'll later be teaching in classes where they'll find a huge diversity. That's what we want to express with those colours here. All chairs, all colours are completely jumbled up. I don't have to explain what that means.
John Maes, head of department KHK-Vorselaar
We also have a meeting place, here, the agora. And we made that meeting place physi-cal. It's here, that red dot. We materialized the city's subculture, this for instance is a graffiti wall. But it's typical of a teacher course, as students write messages on it. The rest of the building is based on that. We continued that vision of the agora. When you first come here as a freshman I think it's really cool. Especially those colourful chairs in the cafeteria. It might seem chaotic, but it's fun. Last year, I really liked that playful and cool approach.