14/06/2017
The Berkenbos Campus of Sint-Franciscuscollege in Heusden-Zolder was thoroughly redesigned as part of the ‘Schools of Tomorrow’ construction project. Thanks to the work carried out, the school no longer even needs to be called the Berkenbos Campus, as two separate campuses have now been brought together on this single site.
At the same time, outdated buildings were demolished, renovated or extended with new structures. The core team—comprising the architectural firm Stramien cvba, in collaboration with engineering consultancy IRS and Cenergie cvba, and the contractor Democo—rose to this challenge in impressive fashion.
The construction project consists of four major interventions carried out in two phases, in order to ensure the school could continue to operate.
First phase (August 2014 to January 2016)
Phase two (January 2016 to August 2016)
In addition, a great deal of landscaping work was carried out, such as the redesign of the monastery garden, the creation of various playgrounds, the installation of a canopy, etc.
Although Sint-Franciscuscollege has only existed since 2000, it is a school with a long history. Education has been provided on the current site since the 1930s, by the Friars Minor.
That is why some of those outdated buildings were demolished. The renovations, in turn, were carried out with the utmost respect for the architectural heritage, whilst still bringing the buildings up to modern standards and requirements. You can see this, for example, in the staff room, in the gym, or indeed in the stained-glass windows from the chapel that have been incorporated into the new buildings.
The new sections also blend seamlessly with the wider picture: the façade consists of a mix of five colours of facing brick that reference the existing building blocks.
For some time now, Sint-Franciscuscollege has chosen to explicitly position itself as a digital school. The school therefore focuses on online platforms and the use of computers, tablets and digital whiteboards.
The school construction project facilitated this development in two ways. On the one hand, all new classrooms are equipped with digital whiteboards with touchscreens: 52 in total, to be precise. On the other hand, a completely new open learning centre has been built. This allows pupils to work with ICT tools even more and makes it possible for pupils to work across classes or independently.
Sint-Franciscuscollege offers general secondary education (aso), technical secondary education (tso) and vocational secondary education (bso) across a wide range of subjects. Consequently, the construction project includes the following specialist classrooms:
But all these different courses are not confined to their own classrooms. The school went further than that: display cabinets have been set up in the corridor. In these, students exhibit their work to pupils from other courses. These corridors have therefore been aptly named Art Avenue and Shopping Street.
And then comes the most remarkable feature of these school buildings: the theatre hall.
203 seats, on a telescopic grandstand that can be extended and retracted electrically. Acoustic panels. A mobile acoustic sliding wall. A stage with storage space. Projectors, a screen, electric curtains and all the connections for the lighting and sound systems. All of this forms part of the so-called initial fit-out and was provided in full by the contractor.