Royal Athenaeum Ostend
Kelly Vuylsteker, Teacher morality and ICT
You're always in a better mood in a bright environment than in a dark and depressing one.
Paul Vanden Bussche, principal middle school 1 Oostende
The strength of this school's design is the light in all the rooms. The school was built around a central playground. This creates an open building, with a lot of views and it's very airy. On top of that, it's a very modern building.
The students are a lot calmer here than in the previous building. The acoustics in the previous building weren't that good, here they're perfect.
In the design they made sure they would use the outside space to the full. To that end they divided the playground into three different levels. One part is on top of our multipurpose room, another part is even higher. That creates a lot of possibilities outside, in spite of the limited space. At the same time, it allows a lot of light to get into the building.
Kelly Vuylsteker, Teacher morality and ICT
It was a big change as this is a modern building. They especially like the playground, that's cool. Those levels have an American touch to them. The immediately like that, they think it's cool and fun.
Joni Puystjens, Studend second grade
I think it's a very good school, and a nice school, too. It's very easy to go from one classroom to another in this school. A lot of people like our playground, with those three levels. And we have two wooden benches for children who want to eat outside. And in the multipurpose room inside we can do sports or many other things. And we can sit on those stairs and so on.
Paul Vanden Bussche, principal middle school 1 Oostende
The architect looked for ways to make maximal use of the limited space we had. Our multipurpose room downstairs next to the hall can be used for many things: special lectures, gym classes... It offers a lot of possibilities. Next to that we have an enormous cafeteria, where students from secondary school have lunch as well. We make it work. And the bicycle shed is hidden behind the multipurpose room, that's well done. It's incredible how much they could fit into such a small space.
Kelly Vuylsteker, Teacher morality and ICT
The students from second grade are now in third grade in the school next door. They like it there, but the first thing they mentioned was the huge transition from this modern building to the Harry Potter style building next door. It's darker and older there. And here we have bright colours and modern stuff. That was the first thing they told me when I asked how they liked it there.
Paul Vanden Bussche, principal middle school 1 Oostende
No, I don't want to go back to the old school, although I loved it there. The advantages of the new building are very obvious.