Basisschool voor Buitengewoon Onderwijs

The school for children with special needs in the small village of Rumst, a project by Bovenbouw Architecture, responds to the question of architectural expression by carefully searching for the free spaces that can be found within the application of standardised lements and their repetition. Internally organised around an adjustable multifunctional corridor/square/hall, the school presents itself as a slightly deformed two-storey volume, the appearance of which evokes associations with the architecture of Scandinavian welfare states. The geometric deformation and functionally intelligent (but humorous) details create the impression of a rural school in a forest, one that somehow seems ever so slightly out of focus and fuzzy, as though taken from a 1960s children’s film.

Author: Christoph Grafe. This text has been published in the Architecture Review Flanders N°11. Embedded Architecture.