'Dender' Primary School Geraardsbergen
compagnie O - architecten
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Status:
Realized
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Education type:
GO! Education of the Flemish Community
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Education level:
Primary Education
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Address:
Sasweg, 9500 Geraardsbergen
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Client:
GO! Education of the Flemish Community
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Contest:
Open Call 03
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Programme:
classrooms, multifunctional hall
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Area:
1.585 m2
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Number of classrooms:
18 existing classrooms
8 new classrooms
Multifunctional hall and new classrooms behind a double wall
The GO! Flemish Community Education primary school in Geraardsbergen is located in an inner area with limited space adjoining the river Dender, a natural area with many back gardens. There are two buildings on this rather accidentally developed site: a low pavilion with a nursery department and a much larger building for the primary school. This block dominates the school site. It dates from the early 1970s and was built precisely in accordance with the official standardisation figures for state education: large scale, solid and formal. The circulation is ample and the classrooms are stacked in three levels. The successful school burst out at the seams: emergency classrooms were added and the old multifunctional hall and corridors were taken over for teaching activities.
The building programme provides for the construction of eight new classrooms and a large multifunctional hall. This is a substantial programme in view of the limited space on the site. With their design the Ghent office of compagnie O architecten is trying to safeguard the already limited remaining space as far as possible on this restricted site.
The multifunctional hall is set perpendicular to the main wing, close to the partition wall. It is kept as low as possible, and is lowered by almost a metre. The hall is “surrounded” by a roof overhang in order to create a sense of scale, to mark the entrance to the main building and to provide a partly covered outside area. The glass façade is light and airy.
The new classes are not joined perpendicularly, but adjoin the three-metre wide corridor of the existing building. This has the advantage that the scarce outside space is taken up as little as possible and that the existing system of circulation, the corridors and staircases can now also be used for the extension. In addition, this proposal means that it is necessary to keep the generous heights of the classrooms of approximately 3.5 m, which would in normal contemporary school practice be considered to be uneconomical and unsustainable, although it does provide a generous amount of space. The new classrooms also benefit from a good view of the marvellous Dender valley and the historical city centre on the edges of the ‘Wall’.
The appearance of the old school is drastically changed. The new wing of classrooms is formed by the creation of a double wall, giving the school a necessary facelift. It is clearly visible from the town and underlines the unfailing commitment of this pluralist school. The new façade is a jigsaw puzzle, a patchwork of different sorts of ‘white’ glass, from ordinary transparent glass to translucent to almost opaque glass. A graphic Muy bridge sequence surrounds the front of the building in an unexpected and cheerful way.
The new classrooms have been ‘sewn together’ to the existing corridor on two levels, with a long cupboard which is glazed at the top. This furniture integrates the possibilities for group work or personalised learning inside and outside the classroom, provides storage space and also creates vistas: the furniture at the same time acts as a buffer and a connection. The cupboard is a single extended addition a dynamic multicoloured intervention which radically overturns the rather sedate 1970s atmosphere. This design is aimed at questioning the nanny ‘Studio 100 world’ of an overprotective generation.