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Aimé Ntakiyica

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• Status:

  Design

• Education type:

  Municipal Education
  

• Education level:

  Primary Education (pre-school + primary)
  

• Address:

  Heilig Hartplein 3, 9620 Zottegem
  

• Client:

  The Flemish Government Architect's Team

• Keywords:

  Art Commission

Open-air Classroom

Places of initiation belong to every era. They are an integral part of our tradition and history. The initiatory function is chiefly provided in contemporary Western society by the school, and more specifically the classroom. The latter tends to have a stereotypical layout and make-up: an enclosed space with a teacher’s desk, a blackboard and benches for pupils. Aimé Ntakiyica takes those things and places them outside. The result is an open and playful learning space, the only boundaries of which are its own furniture. The ‘classroom’ is freely accessible to anyone at any time of the day or night, seven days a week. Pupils can use it with their teachers, but families, passers-by, couples, animals and so on are welcome too.
The forest is one of the oldest initiation places in a variety of cultures, and so Ntakiyica initially envisaged his classroom in a ‘wild’ setting. The project can, however, be realized just as well in the more structured context of a wood or park: an ‘open-air classroom’. Hence his choice in the end to use concrete and geometric volumes in a design that recalls the urban furniture we know from large and small parks and other public locations.