The villageschool: how a specific programme can radiate to revitalise a village centre

In our project for the first session of Living Cities, we expanded our ideas on the specific programme for a school to explore ways to revitalise the fabric of a village centre. Our “village school” proposal, which won a prize in 2021 for Europan 16, drew a parallel between the built reality and the more forward-looking ideas that can be incorporated into a school programme. Those are the ideas we develop here in the context of the Living Cities theme. As we studied the rural margins and centre of the village, we became aware that these spaces were in fact fragile. Although they had been in place for decades, over time they had undergone varying degrees of change and alterations in their uses. For example, with more individualised lifestyles and the arrival of households that did not make their living in the village, the previous community spaces (groceries, small shops, café, markets…) were emptied by the business parks and shopping centres of the nearby towns. Moreover, a lack of thought about the harmonisation and conservation of these village landscapes had completely erased their structure. Looking at historical photos from the beginning of the century, one finds a great deal of homogeneity in these compositions, a combination of red bricks, tiles and paving stones that conveyed a strong sense of solid minerality. That is no longer the case: households have undertaken their own renovation work without regulations or guidelines, covering the brick with white render or replacing timber window frames and doors with white PVC.

This created a dual challenge of both aesthetics and function, but the question was the same: how could we “re-village” and thereby revitalise this fabric?

In communities like this, the school programme is an unchanging factor (when it is not pooled via intermunicipal structures, but that is another subject). In fact, by contrast with other cultural or sports facilities, it is difficult to compromise with schools. The town or village is required to offer its children places of education of sufficient size and quality. Despite this, calls for tenders tend to be published at the last moment. We have visited schools where children were taught in terrible conditions, in 1950s municipal buildings that had never been upgraded.

The programmes are generally rigid, focused on renovation rather than transformation. There is no medium- and long-term planning, at village or larger scale, just an attempt to deal with a dilapidated building and changing demographics and to qualify for the available subsidies. As a result, a typical wording found in rural school briefs might run as follows: “Following the construction of a new housing estate in the village, the municipality wishes to improve its school’s thermal performance, build two additional classrooms and increase its dining space.”

Enriching this basic brief by zooming out, imagining possibilities not just for the school but for a whole village, its porosities, its itineraries, its temporalities.

Beyond the basic programme, in other words the task of simply following the brief, we thought it essential to undertake a larger scale diagnosis before responding to any invitation to tender. For us, this audit was the moment for the village to express its aspirations before factoring in technical or economic constraints. We carried out this assessment of the village’s potential in the last session of

Europan in a project called the “village school”. We think of this school project as an anti-model. It has no form. It is not replicable. It is ultra-contextualised. Like a country doctor, we diagnosed problems of varying severity and tried to find spatial and architectural remedies to treat them:

Is the village square in the right place? Are its dimensions right? What should we do with the old café? Does the weekly market meet the needs of the locals? Of producers? Are the public spaces being used in the right way? At the right times? Is the street system optimised? Is it safe? Is there any available land? What is the condition of the existing architectural and landscape fabric?

These questions lead not into a plethora of architectural proposals to be “squeezed” into new buildings, but to the optimisation of existing qualities, which is achieved by introducing a few catalysts. They act as conduits or stimuli that will give substance to – bring into existence – the village school. This might mean refurbishing the school and sharing its amenities, such as school facilities, the cafeteria, or meeting rooms, which local people can use on evenings and at weekends. It might also mean building a wooden hall on the village square to improve conditions for the market, and at the same time encouraging the introduction of urban farming that can be showcased in the new structure, which might also become a venue for sports activities such as fitness or dance classes (quartier libre, Lille-Vauban). It is a process that needs to support all possible practices and aspirations in the village (and there are many such initiatives, e.g. new “third-place” programmes), and at the same time develop economic arrangements for sharing amenities in order to optimise costs and minimise operations for maximum effect on the village centre, thus ultimately making the architectural intervention central to the revitalisation of village life.

How can architecture help to catalyse cultural and social interactions?

The original brief for the village of Vendegies-sur-Ecaillon was to move the nursery school to the other side of the main road, so that the children would no longer have to cross it in order to get to the canteen. The example of Vendegies-sur-Ecaillon shows us that the basic brief –which was unchangeable because the competitive tendering system for public contracts obliges bidders to follow the programme – can nevertheless be adapted to the reality and specific potential of its context. In a standard procedure, our regular and immediate interlocutors were the elected officials themselves (mayor, public works officer, finance officer, culture and youth officer…). In these projects – which are costly to the municipality – all the interlocutors participate, so it goes beyond the issue of “remaining in office”. It is therefore during the development of the project that the discussions grow in substance and value: discussions of facts, difficulties, ambitions, all of which modulate the original fixed demands. The possibilities of the villageschool emergee in the study phases, so in that sense the village acts as an incubator of new programmes. These fruitful interactions – around the brief, the neighbourhood, the landscape or biodiversity – were introduced through discussions about creating new connections between the school programme and village activities. By offering practical descriptions of the architectural operations, we encouraged our interlocutors to discover facets of the Living City: sowing the potential for new uses. The project land consisted of the plots of demolished detached houses acquired by the municipality through compulsory purchase. Sloping steeply from the north (a 3 m difference in level), the upper part offers views over the distant landscape. Surrounded by public programmes (canteen, primary school, extracurricular venues, village hall, church) that have historically faced outwards towards the roads, this was a large site devoid of structure. The objective emerged from these characteristics: to clarify the urban structure by developing interactions between programmes.

The school’s location in the centre of a block gave it an introspective character. Nonetheless, we decided to open it up – in a controlled way – by means of close and meticulous dialogue with the existing fabric. Through the creation of a crossing, the school would become “walkable”, a village connector that could play its part in revitalising the urban fabric.

The site’s natural topography is the tool that facilitates the route through the school. While the old school faced up the slope, rotating the new school to face down the slope accentuates the qualities of the route. The school is crossed via the gallery – a new structure long enough to add quality to the new public space created by breaking up the primary school courtyard. This reshapes the site to give the courtyard geometric form, while opening up the view to the landscape below. A second, perpendicular movement reinforces the character of the school as a connector between the church and the presbytery. While the school follows tradition in remaining closed to its immediate environment, the boundaries and connection to the landscape are managed in such a way as to strengthen the link with the existing fabric while maintaining its protective role. Forming both a boundary and an opening, a curtain wall runs the whole length of the building perpendicular to the slope. This transparency introduces a dialogue between the children and the village and creates interactions on both sides of these two worlds. The elevated position of the passage attracts the eye to the distant landscape, making the view a spectacular component of the children’s everyday experience. Conversely, the nursery school playground is enclosed for reasons of safety, and is also located in the most sheltered part of the site. A surrounding wall, made of the same brick as the neighbouring buildings, follows a trajectory adapted to existing features, skirting foundations and a tomb to be preserved and linking to the gable wall of the presbytery. The ridgeline forms a landscape of treetops and roofs framed by two large gaps visible from the presbytery garden.

The second priority, concerning community life, relies on the interactions between programmes. Observation of the cycle of daily life in Vendegies-sur-Ecaillon reveals a wide range of activities across the different timeframes of the project. The presence of different architectural features stimulates aspirations beyond the basic brief for the school programme.

Since the topography requires an appropriate structural system, the school stands on a concrete base that houses the technical utilities and leaves the upper platform free. For linkage purposes, this pedestal also accommodates a large storage unit that can be used by the nearby municipal technical departments.

The gallery structure connecting the old and new schools, which protects the children from the rain and the prevailing winds that had prevented comfortable use of the playground, is a scalable space. We also included a living space within it – currently a tea room for the teachers – which creates the potential for future activities that can use the upper courtyard. These connections are made possible by the presence of a small kitchen and toilets. Through the simplicity of this unforeseen outcome, the courtyard on its own can host a ceremony, a village event or an open-air cinema, all at the heart of a secure site. The building’s flexibility is reinforced by the use of a metal roof. This was chosen for its efficiency and speed of implementation, as well as its affinity with the composition of the surrounding farm buildings. The span determines the layout, placing the school between the courtyard and the corridor. Once again, the shared programmes are specifically designed for versatility. Because of its accordion doors, the activities hall – also an extracurricular venue – becomes a buffer space. While it links the courtyard and the gallery, it can also be fully opened up to the town, forming a link between the church and the presbytery outside school hours and providing a venue for carnival celebrations or cultural and sports events.

The metal structure extends as far as the gallery, providing the desired refinement in the dialogue between top and bottom. Finally, the glazed sections make for both transparency and access to distant views. In some cases it fosters an interplay of reflections that showcase the sky and the surroundings; elsewhere it reveals the domesticity of the school areas through the warmth of the internal wooden finishes. Standing at the heart of the community, the school establishes a new and close relationship with the village. Its linear and discreet form does not disrupt the long-standing connection with the landscape. Nonetheless, the metal gallery, with its more contemporary style, acts as a connecting thread, instantiating both a new image of the village centre and also the potential for interaction between school and village life. The influence that radiates from the Vendegies school to the village and its inhabitants resonates with our prize-winning village-school proposal for Europan. We are convinced that, through programmes of this type and scale, architecture can contribute to “village making”, to creating links between local people by the opportunities it offers beyond the requirements of the brief. Overcoming boundaries and crossing thresholds is a way to embody the social role of the architect and to work on education in the broad sense of the term. Learning to live in a community, forming bonds between generations, creating a village economy, growing together in conditions that “make things possible”, are themes that need to be deeply embedded in the responses that architects provide to this kind of brief, a programme for living cities.