Middle School

The project for Middle School in Geraardsbergen is not limited to the renovation and extension of a school. It concerns the renewal of a complete educational site embedded in a protected urban setting, located strategically between the station, the Grote Markt and the Dender.

The ambition is to create a school that responds to contemporary educational needs while strengthening its role within the wider urban fabric. Rather than treating the existing buildings as a constraint, the project sees the historic ensemble as a valuable framework for a future-oriented campus where learning, movement and public presence are carefully connected.

The design starts from a close reading of the site and its surroundings. The future car-free Begijnhofkaai is understood as the representative gateway to the school and as an opportunity to reposition the campus more openly towards the city and the river.

The central architectural idea is clear: combine the reactivation of the existing school buildings with a strategically placed new atrium building on the northern edge of the site, creating a clear entrance, an orienting backbone and a stronger urban presence. The new volume takes on the rhythm and scale of the surrounding neoclassical buildings without imitating them, allowing old and new to reinforce one another.

The schoolyard becomes the principal organising surface of the campus. Because the buildings remain dispersed rather than fully joined, orientation and circulation are embedded in a new architectural backbone: the atrium and its connecting walkways. This structure links the different buildings and gives the site a legible internal logic for pupils, staff and visitors.

The educational programme is distributed according to the spatial qualities of the existing volumes. High classrooms and attic spaces are reinterpreted as flexible reserves, allowing differentiated learning environments and future adaptation. The new atrium accommodates administration, kitchen functions, polyvalent use and shared gathering space, while terraces and widened walkways offer places for break-out, outdoor learning and informal exchange.

The project adopts a cascade logic: preserve what is structurally sound, upgrade what is urgent and add new elements only where the existing buildings cannot provide the required efficiency or spatial quality. Existing walls, floors and openings are retained wherever possible. Roofs are renewed as a first essential step, activating the attic floors as useful space and improving safety, comfort and energy performance.

In building G41, a new timber roof structure with laminated beams and CLT roof plates creates full-height upper rooms and brings daylight into the learning spaces. Similar principles apply to G44 and the other reused buildings. The new atrium is conceived as a stacked structure of open floor plates connected by event stairs, offering both clarity and long-term flexibility.

The open areas of the site are treated as climate-responsive learning grounds. Historic open space remains open, while excessive hard surfaces are replaced with planting and permeable paving. A new sports court is designed to absorb and buffer water in heavy rain, and the schoolyard becomes a sequence of greener, more varied outdoor spaces.

The new entrance canopy and connecting walkways also strengthen the relationship between indoor and outdoor life, making the campus more welcoming and more coherent as a lived environment.