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Top sports school Antwerp

Building a passive top sports school

Study techniques and EPB in collaboration with Compagnie-O architects.
 
Customer
AG Vespa
Building place
Wilrijk
Type of building
Sport and education
Sector
Public sector, Education
Floor space of the building
5 600 m²
Project sheet
Topsportschool @ Wilrijk
Topsportschool @ Wilrijk
AG VESPA has built a completely new top-class sports campus at Fort VI in Wilrijk on behalf of the urban education department of Antwerp. The school houses more than one hundred secondary school students who, in cooperation with various sports federations, will be guided to become top athletes. Outside school hours, the accommodation will be open to local sports clubs.

The concrete pedestal of the building houses the sports hall, the judo and taekwondo hall and the associated spaces such as fitness and refectory. They are rather closed, shielded concrete spaces, where top athletes can fully focus on their athletic performance. The pedestal is 8.5 m high and about 54 x 57 m wide and was poured on site, a technical challenge. The sloping walls in green concrete are left to nature so that mosses and plants can grow there.

In the upper section, the classrooms of the school are located behind a complete, storey-high glazed facade with a patio in the centre of the section. The changing composition of the triple glazing creates a varying facade, sometimes slightly transparent to fully reflective. The disc consists of a light steel structure with a length of 50 m.

The school has been built according to the passive house standard and is very energy efficient. Rainwater recuperation, heat recuperation from the drained shower water and energy-efficient lighting are used. Solar panels have been installed on the canopy of the covered playground.