RAAMWERK . photos: © Stijn Bollaert
The typology of the youth center is similar to a house. A house that is open to the neighborhood, but also offers intimacy for the users. A generous house, where spontaneous meetings and activities can take place. The youth center is built following the same principles as the surrounded houses are built, only bigger. This makes the youth center almost an abstraction of its context.
The program is divided in various rooms, each with a specific scale, proportion and orientation towards its context. The rooms are interconnected in a direct way. Because of this interconnection, the separate rooms can work together just as easily as they close themselves off. A flexibility that is the result of a banal complexity, similar to the complexity of a house.
The rooms are shifted around two outdoor spaces which is mainly functional as there is almost no internal circulation in the youth center. The outdoor spaces mediate between the building and the neighborhood and receive the status of ‘event court’ by doing this. A garden wall interiorizes the space and the fireplace becomes the pivot around which the courtyard unfolds.
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Location: Lichtervelde (BE) Year: 2016 – 2019 Team: Gijs De Cock, Freek Dendooven, Jon D’haenens, Helena Sileghem icw Robuust ao en Atelier Arne Deruyter Status: Built Pictures: Stijn Bollaert
