Topsporthal met jeugdhuis

The addition, by URA Yves Malysse Kiki Verbeeck, to an existing village sports hall complex is subtle and strategic. The view from its windows in fact stretches well beyond the trees in the foreground over football pitches that push into the realm of the fields beyond. The colonisation of the surrounding countryside follows the pattern of the nebular city. Visually diverse dwellings make their built-up tunnels along the roads, but the highly organised, collective programme of the sports complex embodies a different characteristic of the morphology, thus revealing the other side of freedom. Made apparent in the long walkway, the addition consists of a new regional-level gymnasium block that also hosts a village pétanque club. At the end is a new youth club. In plan, this disintegrates the potentially long, blank wall of the gymnasium block into a series of varied internal and external spaces.

This text is based on the essay of Helen Thomas, which is published in the Flanders Architectural Review N°14. When Attitudes Take Form