'De Levensboom' Primary School Marke
Klaas Vandommele, principal Freinetschool ‘De Levensboom’, Marke
Before we had this building, our school was located in some kind of barracks. Now communication between groups is on a higher and more intense level than ever. This surely proves that architecture influences how people live, play and work.
Bernard Wittewrongel, architect
One of the school's main principles is that we decided in favour of a school without any corridors. You can enter all our classrooms via the courtyard, via the outside. Only in the administration's building there's a small corridor from the hall to the cafeteria.
What's important in this school, which is run by the parents, is that there's openness to the administration's building. The parents are involved and have a coffee with the teachers. So, that's very important.
Klaas Vandommele, principal Freinetschool ‘De Levensboom’, Marke
Next to that we have the pigeon holes. Every week, there's a newsletter containing announcements and invitations concerning life and work at school. That's how we communicate very directly with parents. You could ask if in today's world of computer and e-mail communication it wouldn't be better to do away with this. This is a well-considered choice to get the parents here. If they want to know what's happening at school, they have to come to school.
Bernard Wittewrongel, architect
The slanting roofs of the building were designed to make duplexes in the classrooms possible. The original design included them, but the teachers didn't want them as they didn't see the point of it. And now, eight years later, we see the duplexes are here on our own initiative to accommodate various educational corners in the classrooms.
All classrooms are accessible from the outside, we don't have corridors. That allowed us to allocate more space to the classrooms themselves. Everywhere we have an entrance lock with a toilet and a cloakroom. All of them give access to two classrooms. Teachers also wanted to work with grade classes, so that two classes would be able to work together regularly.
Klaas Vandommele, principal Freinetschool ‘De Levensboom’, Marke
This wooden terrace was a very conscious choice. On the one hand it's a good surface for the children's playground, and on the other hand it's like an arena. When teachers or class groups want to present a certain project, they can stand in the middle while the children are sitting on the decking. And another important use: At noon, when the weather is nice, children can have their lunches outside.
Bernard Wittewrongel, architect
We had a relatively limited budget. And after we drew up the balance sheet, we'd used 15 to 20% less than the Department's estimated budget. To get there, we used a very standardized working method. All panels, all window panes, all windows themselves, they always have the same width. The entire system was modulated to enable a certain form of repetition and to keep the cost price for the school as low as possible. This was realized, excluding the outside spaces, so only the school buildings, for around 650 euros per square metre in 1998.