TEMPORARY HIGH SCHOOL BUILDING ON THE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL CAMPUS (EIDD)

Description

The temporary High School building is part of a school campus, consisting of three free-standing buildings, situated at the northern end of Parc de la Chiers. The area was long dismissed as a “non-lieu”, because the park tails off at this point into an ill-defined urban landscape.
The elongated mass of the temporary school forms an extension to a city district street and leads on to the park. This enhances the adjacent residential properties and links them more closely to the park.

The entry hall has been left as untrated exposed concrete, underlining the school’s temporary nature. This choice of material and the light entering over three storeys gives the space an ambiance which resembles industrial buildings and which suits the district and the large industrial plant.

The main staircase, is the only decorative part in the building. It rises from the ground floor to seating steps and thus creates a small forum.

The vertical façade slats, in finely nuanced anodised shades ranging from silver to brown, also mediate between the adjacent working class area with its plaster façades, turned rust brown, and the green of the park.

At the rear, facing the workers‘ houses, the façade slats cover only the ventilation vent surfaces. The rest of this façade surface consists of Eternit tiles, a material which is often used for garden sheds or the rear façades of houses. This design creates a balance and forms a connection between the new school building and the residential houses.
Given that this concerns a temporary school with only 9 month of construction time, the building, including the façade system, is made solely out of mono-materials which means that the individual materials can easily be dismantled and reused or recycled.

Observation :
This project is a temporary building and, for that reason, built with very little resources, which means reduced planning, construction time and reduced budget.
However, we present this project because we are convinced that it is also worth to pay attention to minor and less representative projects like temporary structures.
We kindly ask the jury to take our argumentation in consideration.