'Sint-Ursula' Primary School Laken
Tom Thys en Adinda Van Geystelen Architecten
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Status:
Realized
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Education type:
Free Subsidised Education
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Education level:
Primary Education (pre-school + primary)
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Address:
Dieudonné Lefèvrestraat 41, 1020 Brussel
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Client:
Catholic Education, Brussels Noord
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Keywords:
Community school
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Contest:
Open Call 4
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Programme:
classrooms, administration, staffroom, dining area and multifunctional space
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Area:
2.090m2
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Number of classrooms:
12 classrooms
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Related project:
A school like a house in the street
The Sint-Ursula Primary School is located in the centre of Laken, and together with the special primary school SPES, the French language Ecole Sainte-Ursule and the Collège de la Fraternité it occupies a large urban complex. In this block, the school owns a green area which the board of governors considers important. The old primary school, situated in dilapidated prefabricated containers and an old building on the site, needed new infrastructure with room for nursery classrooms, a primary school, rooms for the head teacher and the teachers, a dining area and a multifunctional area for sports and other activities. The school opted for a design which enables a community-based approach. The school has an intake of children of many different nationalities and the available green spaces in the area are currently considered to be inaccessible. Therefore the school sees this place as the heart of its own educational vision and as the starting point for opening up the school.
The design team conceived the school as a town on a small scale. The children can feel at home there as members of a larger community. The ground floor plays a key role in the operation of the building. It not only accommodates school activities, but also activities of the community. It consists of a series of half-open spaces of different dimensions. The multifunctional hall, the dining area and the multifunctional room can be screened off either by a theatre curtain, a sliding wall or a folding wall. In the classrooms on the other floors, attention is devoted mainly to spatial comfort and good lighting and ventilation. The classrooms on the third floor with a beautiful view of Brussels can also be used for community activities. The location of the building defines a number of outside areas with different characters. There is the paved area at the entrance to the school, the semi-paved area with trees on the other side of the Dieudonné Lefèvrestraat (which can be used as a playground for the children), and a wild garden with grasses in the area by the kitchen and the multifunctional room.