A marvel. All that we dreamt of doing for twenty years, and here we are bound to execute it under threats of penalty.
First ambition of the ‘high environmental quality’ label: to gently insert the school in the small town of Caudry. We draw inspiration from the cities forms, its proper scale, its spaces, its population in order to (deal with) the schools’ unavoidable critical mass.
A big rectangular schoolyard is planted with ten aligned plane trees. This makes those in search for discipline happy. The rest of the exteriors are chaotic, but strictly go by the demands of the building program. Aligned around the central schoolyard are the different buildings: The administrative wing under which one has to pass to enter the school (symbolic?), the centre for information and documentation, the classrooms for general education, the fine arts tower, the restaurant and its kitchen and storage facilities, the infirmary, the larger halls for technical education and the students’ faculty rooms. The teachers’ housing units are politely situated at the end of a row of existing houses. The total floor surface of the school is 12.500m². Naturally, no two elements out of which the school consists are identical: that is the least of things in order to avoid possible anaesthetics provoked by architecture; and maybe this kind of natural disorder might catalyse the always magical communication between the student and the teacher. A little surprised by all this at first, all our associates followed very well. All our partners were bound to deliver great (quality) work to justify the ‘high environmental quality’ label, and to have everything accepted by the clients’ rigorous inspection. This one, as surprised as all the others, but once seized by the game, co-operated magnificently but strictly….