Brussels municipalities are short of school places and the region is already densely built up. However, it is sometimes possible to look upward … This is what the Label office proposed for the Arc-en-ciel municipal school in Saint-Josse: to build up rather than take over a neighbouring building. With new classrooms, a doubling of the playground and optimization of the existing space, the project, at once lucid and generous, stands somewhere between architecture and infrastructure.
In the narrow street that runs down the slope of this hillside in Saint-Josse, you have to look up to see where the children’s shouts are coming from. Up there, a white structure completes the corner of the school’s brick volume and a few heads bob up and down. In response to a brief to extend the Arc-en-ciel municipal school into a neighbouring house, the Label office proposed instead to take over the rooftops of the existing school. The spaces that the school lacked on the ground were then added upward. Four new classrooms, two large outdoor spaces and the newly reorganized circulation in an existing wing make up a lucid response to a dense context.
The existing school, which adjoins a crèche, brings together a dozen primary classrooms and their collective halls into two wings – one on the street side and one inside the block, in a merry congestion of spaces defined by a selection of modest but carefully thought-out interior materials. The result is compact and efficient, like the large gym hall that gives onto the playground, doubling its volume when the doors between the two are open. The interventions in the project continue this optimized arrangement of spaces, pursuing a simple expression of the material, as one would carefully put away a well-kept chest or toolbox.
In the interior of the block, a path runs along the classrooms on three floors and provides them with an interface and a circulation that they were cruelly lacking. Schoolbags and coats can be hung here. This path leads to the playground, which is home to the second intervention. This intervention now climbs upwards, via ropes, stairs and a slide, and sets the void overhanging the playground in motion. Nicknamed ‘the table’ by the architects, a slab encircled by high white railings almost doubles the outdoor play area. The four posts that support it, all of which are different, become elements of play. A roof and a floor. Up above, a space in the sun – down below, a space in the shade. This strange vessel withstands the pupils as they board regularly at playtime.
In the wing on the street side, four new classrooms, soberly composed of white-painted masonry walls and glazed woodwork interior walls, replicating the plan of the lower floors. They raise the school by one storey and provide the neighbouring crèche with a roof and a panoramic view of the north-east of Brussels. The stairwell, raised to access this extension, mimics the neighbouring gable. From there, it is also possible to observe the hustle and bustle of older pupils. The white railings below are the same as those that keep us from falling upwards, suggesting the relation between the two operations.
Inside, the materials are simple and match the choice of earlier coverings. The interventions on the existing tiled floors – which it would be difficult to replicate identically – stand out by a change of materials. Ultimately, the lucidity of the interventions positions the project somewhere between architecture and infrastructure. In a district that is historically dense with schools, which is not lacking in references in this respect, the approach is generous and goes beyond a simple programmatic response.
