Futura
The school is located in the village centre of Geluwe, and offers special primary education to pupils with mental disabilities and with emotional and/or behavioural problems.
The programme for the school building provides for administrative classrooms, sanitary facilities, a warm-up kitchen, a multi-purpose room with an adjoining adjoining dining area, classrooms that can be nursery and primary education, subject-specific classrooms, a corridor/circulation with incorporated elements for group work, outdoor classrooms and a few technical rooms.
The dimensions of a class were used as the dimensions of the structure. Each class enjoys a uniform materiality of recycled concrete concrete blocks, wood accents and warm colours.
This materiality is continued throughout the entire interior. The intended result is an inspiring learning environment adapted to the needs of special-needs primary education, warm and robust.
Within the boundaries of special education and its specific target group, the aim was to create an innovative learning environment. By enabling a relationship between the classrooms, the teachers are given room for specialisation. In this way, the architecture could contribute to the school's pedagogical vision, in which teachers can deploy their strengths across multiple classes, rather than individually deploying all subject areas within the boundaries of a single class.
The programme outside the school building includes a kiss-and-ride zone, a green car park, a bicycle shed, a playground, a covered playground and classroom gardens.
The façade is also approached robustly with adapted masonry bonds in concrete brick. The repetition of the exterior The repetition of the exterior joinery gives the building readability and scale. Shared terraces function as extensions of the classrooms and provide a dynamic learning environment where indoors and outside flow into one another.
The covered playground is the central gathering point central meeting point of the school. A connecting external staircase provides access to the upper classrooms. By placing part of the main circulation in the open air, the relationship with being outside is further strengthened.
