Eindhovense School, Eindhoven

Append a vmbo-school with more than 400 pupils to the extremely limited space available to a mbo-education, practically without loss of parking spaces, playgrounds or green spaces? And while retaining the identity of both levels of education?

VAN AKEN managed this by designing a 50-metre long bridge-construction. Four layers of classrooms (1000 m² per floor) cover the existing school.

A choice was made for steel as material for the bridge as it was necessary to create a construction whose weight was so light as was possible, but which also formed a match with the technical image of the existing complex.

This graphic school has a VMBO- and MBO- stream, both with their own entrance bearing in mind the respective ages of the students.

In the building these trends flow into each other by means of the carefully thought-out infrastructure. The interior of the revitalised part has been adapted to the colours and materials of the bridge-construction so that a modern, vibrant school-building full of character is the result. The use of materials inside has also been fully considered, with a clear link between the choice of materials on the inside and the outside. This choice is also designed to withstand the somewhat visceral utilisation which is likely to be the outcome when the users are predominantly teenagers.

It involved an extremely complex combination of building activities in a school which remained very much active. The result was more than satisfactory involving as it did a greater than average exercise in logistics.