Wilrijk - Elite sports school

The TSS, short for Topsportschool, is a meticulous spatial translation of a specific program. The daily timetable of the elite-students and coaches is rigorously scheduled. They move like targets, in Spartan efficiency, from one goal to the next. Circulation between school and training is short, straightforward, unambiguous. No time, neither space, to waste. The school facilitates these movements, seamlessly, swift and quick.

The young athlete is focused and narcissistic. This self-centered view is enhanced by a more communicative look at the other. Challenge and comparison makes the athlete sweat. The TSS is permeated with unexpected inner views, reflective surfaces and voyeuristic spaces.

 

 

The building does not reveal its purpose, it merely exists on this awkward site, an abandoned military fortress, overgrown with greenery.  A sloped concrete base emerges from the soil, self-contained and obvious, slightly superior to its surroundings, revealing hardly anything at all.

On top of this solid soil hovers a sharp-edged mirror glass surface, reflecting and deflecting the scenery into scattered views.

It seems like the base and the glasshouse are in a paradoxical confrontation at first. We rather consider it as an oxymoron, it brings together two seemingly incompatible languages within one building, creating a tension we consider interesting. 

 

The Top Sports School is a ‘machine à exceller’ meant to operate seamlessly and swift – an incubator for Belgium’s next generation of top athletes.The inhabitant – an often slightly narcissistic and voyeuristic athlete – is obsessed with his body, performance and ranking. In response, the inside of the building is one of reflective/transparent surfaces and long vistas. One is simultaneously observer and observant.The building lies on the 6th Brialmont-fortress of the fortress ring around the city of Antwerp, next to its very own Roman Circus-type square: the Square of Parades. Its sculptural concrete base is filled with sports facilities and gives the building a kind of spatial autonomy to its surroundings. On top of this base the so-called “school-disk” functions as a kaleidoscopic glasshouse for education.

AG VESPA has been commissioned by the Education Department of the city of Antwerp to build a completely new elite sports school campus located at Fort VI in Wilrijk.
This school will teach over one hundred students in secondary education. In collaboration with various sports federations, these students will be trained into professional athletes. T
he highly motivated students come from all over Flanders and are very disciplined as they choose to combine their studies with high-level sports. Outside school hours the school campus accommodations will be opened to local sports clubs.

Fort VI is the perfect location for building this sports school campus, as all the classes will be held in a spacious and green environment, and many sports facilities already are located in this area.
This building project should use this green environment to its full potential and should blend in as much as possible with the existing sports facilities.

Apart from a new school campus, building new sports facilities will also be a part of the Project. High ambitions will also be set on energy ambitions.

Global fee between 9% en 11% (incl stability, exterior, technical energy studies and acoustics)