‘De Zande’ Community Institute Ruiselede


Hootsmans architectuurbureau

  • Status:

    Design

  • Address:

    Bruggesteenweg 130, 8755 Ruiselede

  • Client:

    Flemish Government, Agency for Youth Care

  • Contest:

    Open Call 12

  • Programme:

    classrooms, computer room, study room, staffroom, fitness and multifunctional space

  • Area:

    1.465m2

  • Number of classrooms:

    12 classrooms


Uitgesneden licht en zicht in een beschermd monument

The community institute ‘De Zande’ in Ruiselede for Special Youth Care accommodates 80 delinquent youths and young people with educational problems who also go to school there. The management wanted to make a clearer distinction between living and learning on the site, and saw the dilapidated Neo-gothic chapel on the middle of the site as a solution. Classes for a maximum of six pupils were planned in the chapel, as well as a computer room, a small study or detention room, a staffroom, separate toilet areas for teachers and pupils, and finally a fitness and multifunctional area.

This was an extremely difficult task. On the one hand, the classrooms have to comply with contemporary norms, while on the other hand, the conversion should not spoil the view and the spatial qualities of the listed chapel. The Hootsmans architects’ office in Amsterdam concentrated on the essence of the task: education. Instead of safeguarding the space as far as possible, they filled the chapel with classrooms. The passageway around it serves as a climate buffer, while the light which comes in through the side windows of the chapel is unimpeded, because the outside walls of the classrooms are made of glass. In the basement, four rooms were planned for fitness, strength, media and creative expression between the columns of the chapel, separated from each other with glass walls.

The closed walls and floors are dissected by what the architect calls ‘lines of light and sight’. To draw the lines of light, Hootsmans took the position of the sun on 21 June and 22 December as a starting point. There are also lines of sight through the building, including the line of sight from the staffroom to the library in the choir. While the sunrays create circles in the walls, the bundles of light which create the lines of sight are rectangular. Soundproof glass was placed in the openings created in this way. This means that there are special views of the old building from the classrooms. The original spatiality of the chapel is replaced by new and fragmented vistas. A number of the architectural elements can be seen through the glass, but no movement, which is ideal for these specific pupils, who often have problems concentrating.
The classrooms will be 4.5 metres high, with an extra floor above. There will be no classrooms there, because the lines of light and sight which go straight through the floors would cause too much distraction. Instead the client and the architect do think it is possible to create staffrooms on top of the classrooms.

Ultimately, the strength of the Hootsmans’ design lies not only in the careful way in which the classrooms are fitted into the chapel, but above all in the volume of each individual classroom and the role which sunlight and daylight plays in them.