Lokalen tekenacademie en speelpleinwerking

Today, this former educational establishment stands between a few detached houses with drives. One wing was demolished in the 1970s to make room for a fire station, and the teacher’s house has also gone. The remaining wing later housed the local library and an out-of-school childcare centre. When the fire station was decommissioned, the local council decided to build classrooms for the drawing school and rooms for the playground service. The design, by architecten Els Claessens en Tania Vandenbussche and Chris Matthys does not attempt to reconstruct the mangled version of the building by Pil and Charbon, nor does it strive to form a contrast. The rooms uncomplicatedly but meticulously mirror the existing wing and the partial wall of the yard with a new section of wall and a wing that complete the picture. Like the existing wing, the new addition was given a stepped volume. However, these stylised variations, also in the extended street wall, do not derive from the original building, but are rather a response to it. Behind the street wall, a roofed arcade with a visible wooden structure connects the two wings. In this way, in the bend in the street, the ensemble once again has sufficient weight to lend structure to the street scene.

This text is based on the essay of Maarten Liefooghe, which has been published in the Flanders Architectural Review N°14. When Attitudes Take Form