Kindcentrum Kansrijk

In late 2025 the Mevrouw Meijer Foundation asked us propose an expansion of the elementary school De Leeuwerikhoeve into a day-centre for children aged 0-12, rebranded as Kindcentrum Kansrijk. The ambition was to also turn the school into a community centre. Our answer shaped a project organised around the idea that a building can become more generous without becoming unrecognisable.

The existing building, designed by O. van Spreeuw, already possessed a generosity difficult to replicate today. Its volume, structure, silhouette, and nearly all its interior detailing were worth keeping as a structural argument rather than for nostalgia alone. We thus extended rather than replaced. The main volume was extruded along its own logic, so that the new silhouette reads from the street as a continuation of something already in people’s memory. The specification of a biobased energy-neutral building required us to place thick insulation on the outside. We did so respecting the logic of the existing: between solid brick walls, a filigree and transparent red-stained timber facade keeps the memory of the original, turning history into a technical layer.

Turning the school into a community centre asked us to find ways for the building to reach into the neighbourhood. One of them is Het Hart, a double-height entrance space that runs the full depth of the building and receives light from both sides. During the day it is the living room of the school and the first point of contact for outsiders. In the evenings, it becomes a public interior where people may inquire about lessons, take language classes, ask for counsel, or organise events. Another move was turning the school yard into a green park that keeps its gates open after hours. It includes a movement parcours designed for all ages, where sport, play, and improvisation share the same ground. Where possible, (class)rooms extend into the outside. The youngest children share a raised private garden at ground level; the teachers claim a private roof terrace. Natural cross-ventilation serves all classrooms; the mechanical system is integrated, invisibly, into the existing detailing.

The added programme, a kindergarten, provision for children with special needs, a physician, and adults returning to learn in the evenings, required the building to go beyond its original frontal teaching arrangement. The plan now makes collaborative learning possible in smaller groups, or individual studying, both indoors and outdoors, formal and informal. The school thus became not only a place for learning but a place for living. What made this possible was not an imposed new identity, but a sustained attention to what the building had already become before we arrived.