In the design the private intimacy of the school and the city of Antwerp meet in the courtyard; the city room. In this city room the urban intimacy of Antwerp comes together with the private nature of the Ballet school. Delaying the threshold between public and private, making you forget if it belongs to the school or the city. It can be a dance studio, a performance hall, a lecture hall, or maybe even a dining room.

Abbey Roosenberg in Waasmunster, Belgium was designed by Dutch monk and architect Dom Hans van der Laan. This monumental and iconic building will no longer be used as a monastery. As KU Leuven is going to be a new host, they defined a program that would suit this new special location: a conference and study centre for architects and artists with expectation for it to become a new breeding ground for reflection and new forms of education. Therefore, our task was to make an academic facility that would include existing building and a new extension hosting this new function.

Creating a university congress and study centre on the site of the recently abandoned Abbey of Roosenberg, whilst respecting the work of architect dom Hans van der Laan, forms the core of the challenge. The new addition seeks to blend in with both The Bossche School architecture and the unique gardens and pine forests. The new wings are placed separately from the original abbey, but form a coherent ensemble with it. Honouring Van der Laan's legacy by adopting some of the main architectural themes, such as the gradual entering of the building and the superposition of spaces, whilst not copying its architectural appearance, has been a mayor goal.

The graduation project of the chair Interiors of buildings and cities asks for a new program for the Roosenberg abbey. The Roosenberg Abbey is designed by Dom Hans van der Laan and is located in Waasmunster, Belgium. Since 2016 the Roosenberg will no longer be used as a monastery. Because of its monumental and iconic status, the KU Leuven therefor decided to transform it in an architectural study centre. This was the starting point of the graduation studio. It was our objective to form a program that would suite the Roosenberg and the Ku Leuven, but could also add a narritive to the wider context. To research the functions and sizes for the new programme we looked very closely to our own desires for a architectural study center, since we could be adressed as a future user. The main question in this study was therefor: what is our ideal program for an architectural university or study center. We also looked at precedents of monasteries to understand their architectural language, the positioning of functions and the relations between them.
The project requested a clear position towards the architectural oeuvre and thinking of Dom Hans van der Laan and a clear understanding of his proportion, light and materiality. This would help to take our own position towards the Roosenberg and his surroundings and to reinterpret his design principles in to a contemporary building.
This helped to create our own programme and narrative for the project on how to reuse and extend the Roosenberg Abbey.