Compact building around a central auditorium

The new educational complex was set up as a compact building, with a rigid structure with deep wings - this for sustainability, but also to be able to preserve as many trees as possible in the area. Saint George students enter the building in the spacious three-story auditorium, with a grandstand staircase. This auditorium is the heart of the school around which everything happens, and whose various wings reveal themselves. Thanks to this three-storey layout, crowned with a skylight, the auditorium also provides sufficient daylight into the building.

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Space for talent: BINAS, art, drama, music and top sport

The various subject areas - BINAS, art, languages, top sports, mathematics and society - each have a floor in one of wings, and are all around their own learning square, where students can follow education in a different way. In addition, the school has a large theater and special rooms for Drama and Music, an Open Science Lab where students can do BINAS experiments under supervision, a large gym that can be divided into three parts and a special room for exercise; the main gym has a separate entrance and can therefore be rented by third parties. Last but not least: the offices of the school umbrella, Parmant, will also be part of the new building.

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An integrated school for students with ASD and AD (H) D

Helder, a school of 200 students with an Autistic Spectrum Disorder and/or AD (H) D, joins Sint Joris College with its 1,700 students who also partly take lessons in Saint George when they are older, in order to fully integrate when they are ready. Students in Helder do have their own entrance and a private schoolyard, in order to have a quiet, low-stimulus place between classes. Because of this setup, the link between Sint Joris College and Helder within the building is important. Helder sits in one of the wings of the auditorium, over two of the three floors; above and next to it are the rooms of St. George, and that is conscious, because we do not approach Helder as a separate school but as an 'integrated' part of the whole.

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Balancing peace and connection

The design for Helder was a search for the peace and space that students with ASS and AD (H) D need and to connect; because many of Helder's students take beta courses, the wings for mathematics and BINAS are the closest, in order to remove a first obstacle. However, Helder also has its own spaces. Because classes are smaller, the classrooms are also smaller; there is also less demand for free work space but more need for concentration workplaces, and there is also a central position for the office of the orthopedagogue who supervises the students internally. By using horizontal windows and colors that we choose together with the students, there are also fewer sources of distraction.

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A nature-inclusive landscape design

Due to its location in a wooded, park-like environment, the landscape design was also an important part of the project — and at the same time a task that we have dealt with accurately; for example, we will bring back all the trees, create a green bicycle parking space and rehome the bats.

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