Campus Comenius Koekelberg

The new Koekelberg Campus will be getting an educational complex, a community center, youth areas, a gym, a library, and a residential development on the Vrijheidslaan.

The construction of the community center and the secondary school has started and will be ready in August 2018. Then the primary school and the childcare center will be built on the site on which the temporary school containers stand. These will be ready by the end of 2019.

The school is conceived in such a way that it ‘grows’ along with the kids. The littlest ones will go to the new childcare center, the smallest building on the site, on the west side. At the age of three, they can move to the other side of the playground to the nursery and primary school for the ‘big kids’, in which the classes will be organized around a double-height multipurpose room. Once the kids turn 12, they can jump on the ‘transfer train’ (cross the Dapperenstraat) and continue their education in the secondary school, which also has a large playground.

This allows for internal circulation throughout the entire school complex, with just one street-crossing at the Dapperenstraat.

The community center, youth areas, and gym (all combined inside the community center itself) are center stage in the project. Below the gym is a covered outdoor space where parents, people from the neighborhood, and children can all get together before and after school. This outdoor space is right next to the entrance to the community center and the library, forming the heart of the site, as it were.

The outdoor areas where the kids play and the spaces between are filled with as much landscaping as possible and facilities for sports and play activities. We specifically opted for materials that are durable and will age well.

The schools themselves will be done in lighter shades of brick with colored accents. The facilities that will also be used by the neighborhood, like the gym, the community center, and the youth areas will be done in a deep red.