Community School Aarle-Rixtel

A school building is a special building in a little village, because almost all the inhabitants have spent an important part of their life there. This means that, as an architect, you can give children something for the rest of their lives, because everybody remembers his or hers old school building. “The building as an adventure” was therefore the starting point of the design.
The Primary School Cluster is located in the heart of Aarle-Rixtel in the south of Holland. A fundamental part for the plan were the site-specific qualities like the many old trees and the existing playgrounds.
Beside the use of challenging forms, we have chosen not to use obvious materials. Often raw, sometimes smooth, mostly unfinished and visibly attached the form a unity that does not leave people untouched. The brickwork of the existing gymnastics hall and the entire new school building are finished in the same manner, with a thin film of mortar, called slempwerk. By using this kind of traditional local craft, the buildings form a coherent unity with an appearance like theyve been there for years.
A Primary School Cluster has different users. “Together under one roof” was the basic thought for the lay-out of the total plan. We have chosen a distinctive building with a small-scale charisma, where within the context of the entire building, all users can express themselves.
The main structure is based on a recurring building block of 50m2, which is connected for each independent user in a different way. This circuit determines its own identity, but because of the modular design, compatibility is guaranteed in the future and growth and shrinkage can be captured. The implementation of different angels of inclination into the slanted roofs, is a result of a maximum of spaciousness and variation.