Ghent, Belgium
Designed by Xaveer de Geyter and his team at XDGA, the new Melopee School in Ghent faces one green area on its south side, the dock on its west side, a square, and a housing block on the north, and the harbor road on the east.
The requested program for the building, a combination of a primary school, after-school care center, a nursery, and sports facilities for both the school and its neighborhood, is diverse and extensive.
In the harbor area, a narrow stretch of land along a dock is freed from port activities.
The very simple “chopstick”’ urban plan was developed by O.M.A. in which green open pockets alternate with dense construction.
In order to offer a notion of centrality to the linear plan, a public path is meant to cross the whole strip.
The project required a great deal of specific outside playgrounds.
In order to counter the lack of space, deal with the inside-outside complexity of programs and allow for the public path to pass, the maximum building envelope is divided into two halves: one compact building housing all interior functions, and outside space in which the playgrounds are stacked.
In between both, and under a first-level playground realized in glass tiles, the path crosses the volume.
A galvanized steel skeleton unifies the two halves.
On the side of the interior volume, the façades of the building are designed as a patchwork of opaque and translucent polycarbonate, glass, and aluminum louvers.
The outside structure will be overgrown with vegetation climbing along with a steel mesh, in which some large “windows” are cut out.
Project: Melopee School
Architects: XDGA-Xaveer De Geyter Architecten BVBA
Design Team: Xaveer De Geyter, Karel Bruyland, Thérese Fritzell, Arie Gruijters, Ingrid Huyghe, Willem Van Besien, and Stéphanie Willocx
Client: SO Gent
Photographers: Maxime Delvaux
