The industrial zone of Menen a Belgian city located close to the French border is surrounded by the characteristic landscape of the country’s southern areas, a markedly horizontal scenery of greens and ochers where farming and livestock exploitations coexist with small factories. It is into this context that the new VDAB facility inserts itself like just another component of the landscape. Its new Logistics and Training Center is a building surrounded by three hectares of strips for driving a wide range of heavy vehicles.
The renewal of the school campus ‘Guldensporencollege’ and the ‘Sint-Amands Basisschool’ in Kortrijk is part of the DBFM-programme ‘Schools of Tomorrow’ and in 2011 came out as a winning design of the Open Call of the ‘Team Vlaams Bouwmeester’. It is a project for five school buildings at two campuses within Kortrijk town centre: campus Diksmuidekaai (‘Kaai’) and campus Leiekant at the existing Pleinschool (‘Plein’). The campus Kaai is now accessible to the public using a north-south axis, which actually carries all other future developments. This axis for pedestrians and cyclists is really a chain of green spaces and it also intensifies the ‘community school’ logic, in that the use of sports complexes and infrastructure is shared. This axis also houses the new main entrances for the different buildings of the secondary school. The campus’ west side was provided with a new entrance for motorised traffic, a kiss&ride zone and a connecting parking lot. The location of the parking allows for apart from a more formal, public axis an informal, secondary axis for pupils and teaching staff. This secondary axis allows for short circulation routes not only between the clearly separated entities of the different age and education groups of the secondary and primary schools, but also to the communal functions of these entities, such as the canteen, PE and study rooms and multi-media library. The new bike shed, covered play areas and central campus square are also linked to this secondary axis.
Article source: Philippe SAMYN and PARTNERS sprl, architects & engineers
The importance of the vertical development of cities
The vertical development of cities is one of the foundations of future urbanism for the sake of preserving the natural and agricultural territories.
The verticality is the result of common sense but the livability of vertical housing remains, as its architecture, to be elaborated in order to give rise to a community of inhabitants.
For decades, Philippe Samyn conceived proposals in this direction (see, for example, his essay “The Vertical City” published by the Royal Academy of Belgium in September 2014).
The project of the K-Tower is an integral part of this vision. It is about offering quality apartments instead of beautiful villas arranged in the periphery, the latter being too excessive, both in land consumption and in the development of urban networks.
Project: Reconstruction of The Tower at Sint-Amandscollege – K-Tower
Location: Kortrijk, Belgium
Photography: Carol Kohen, Quentin Olbrechts (Philippe SAMYN and PARTNERS)
Client: Van Roey Vastgoed nv (Van Roey group) and Koramic Real Estate
Design partner and direction: Dr Ir Philippe Samyn, architect
Partners in Charge: Liesbeth Gestels, architect and Jacques Ceyssens, architect (since 2011)
Collaborators: Giuseppe Cardillo, Antoine Colback, Sam De Dobbeleer, Dimitri Debougnoux, Maarten Franssens, Nathalie Masumbuko, Nacer Hosna, Elodie Noorbergen, Alexio Rava, Paolo Ruaro, Pawel Sieradzon, Gerrit Stevens, Gaofei Tan, Thomas Vandeweyer, Roeland Van Lammeren, Christophe Van Raemdonck, Monika Wielocha, architects.
Tags: Belgium, Kortrijk Comments Off on Reconstruction of The Tower at Sint-Amandscollege – K-Tower in Kortrijk, Belgium by Philippe SAMYN and PARTNERS sprl, architects & engineers
The Forum building is the heart of the campus. The campus lacked a decisive image towards its surroundings, as a counterpart to Kortrijk Xpo. At the same time, the campus is defined, but not physically closed off from its environment. This results in an approachable and accessible campus for pedestrians. The aim of the development of the site is to increase the accessibility between Xpo and Campus, to expand the dynamics of the school to the street side and to integrate the campus in its surroundings.
The auditorium is part of a meeting centre that is situated on the site of the general hospital of AZ Groeninge in Kortrijk, Belgium. The hospital itself and all of the infrastructure is designed on a strict cartesian grid. Compared to the hospital the auditorium is only a tiny building, it is located in a corner of the site. It was the intension of the architects to design a building with its own identity, a building on which the cartesian grid was not imposed. It is a hide-out for the staff of the hospital, a place to be away from professional obligations, well integrated in the green surroundings. The building is distinct, has a gracious and optimistic elegance.
The social housing company Goedkope Woning at Kortrij k initiated a comprehensive upgrade of its outdated assets in 2008. It intentionally put the emphasis on healthier homes, rational and more efficient use of space, lower energy consumption and low maintenance costs. At the same time, it also aims fundamentally to reorient the liveability of the neighbourhoods, to integrate into the existing social setting to the greatest possible extent.
This OYO story takes you all the way back to April, when we were notified of our prequalification to design a new campus building for Howest in Kortrijk. Together with Arch&Teco we accepted the challenge to compete against nine other well established offices. We put a lot of love into this design and are proud to present to you our second prize winning proposal.
The Skatchkoff Residence is a detached passive-solar house at the edge of the centre of Kortrijk. The design brings two nostalgic elements into crystal clear form: the saw-tooth structure of the local textile industry and the wooden structure of the dacha of the client’s homeland, Russia.
At the end of 2012, printing office Drukta and mailing company Formail moved into their new building. Not a new build, but a former textile company’s warehouse, spanning 4.000 sqm. For their office space, both companies were looking for a solution which needed to fit their needs and budget. At the same time, they really wanted the original and creative concept to become a proper eye-catcher, linking the office area with the machines on the workfloor – a task right up the street of interior designers Five AM in Kortrijk (Belgium).
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