An existing school building from the 20th century is being renovated into an urban lyceum with room for 240 students. The building is hidden in a dense, urban inner area in Antwerp, surrounded by housing. The project seeks a balance between subtle renovation and creating new qualities where necessary: connecting existing classrooms by means of interior windows and large door assemblies, creating a covered outdoor space, adding fixed interior furniture in each classroom, creating a patio between front and main building, ...
A row house with historic facade on which 'boys' school' is written in large letters forms the entrance porch to the building complex. This front building will become the new teacher's house. Elevated above the entrance, it will have its own place. A patio gives the secretariat a view of the entrance. A hallway leads to the playground. Centered around the imposing stairwell are the rooms for the management, secretariat and care staff.
What is special about the original concept of the school building is that it was built without corridors. The stairwells form the only circulation and provide access to two classrooms on each floor. Consequently, the central open space plays an important role in the circulation: the stairwells are reached via the playground. We create a canopy around the playground that connects these stairwells. The canopy widens locally to form a covered outdoor space. We introduce steps here, creating a place to linger during playtime or a stage for plays, performances, school parties, etc. The school focuses on creative studies and offers space for media, dance and sports. At the head of the playground, the original bathhouse makes room for a sports and dance hall and after-school clubs. The classrooms spread over the ground floor and the first floor. We interconnect some of the classrooms with an opening wall that allows flexible use. The top floor will be transformed into a creative attic with music, media, P.E. and science classrooms. Here, the original studio windows that were replaced by smaller windows in 1980 will be recreated. The views over the historic rooftop landscape and the abundant indirect Northern Lights make these classrooms the most beautiful in the school.

WINNER ARC25 TRANSFORMATION AND RENOVATION AWARD
Letter from Jan Peter Wingender (Chair of the Jury) to Sarah Poot

"Rotterdam, 25 September 2025

Dear Sarah,

When the children have left, their voices fade away, the lights go out and the doors close, what remains is a silence that fills the architecture. In that moment of abandonment, of autonomy, your architecture reveals its true nature. I want you to know that it was not an easy decision for us as a jury. Alongside you stood two exceptional architects who may well have presented their finest work. Projects that are topical, layered, and extraordinarily impressive.

.......

You walked through a stately door in Antwerp’s Kasteelstraat. What you found behind it was a forgotten place. An old school, stripped of meaning, cluttered and scarred by time. Without knowing who might return, you embarked on a careful restoration. You brought back something that had been lost: coherence, shelter, promise. What was once awkward became meaningful. What was once distant became intimate. And in the end, it was that same unknown user who embraced the project—perhaps precisely because you were first willing to embrace it. In truth, there was no single winner for this award. Each of these three projects is exceptional in its own way. To be nominated is already to have won.

But why, then, ultimately you?

Perhaps because, with your project, you have come so close to the very essence of architecture. If you strip away all the noise—the programme, the context, the social mission—what remains is what others have called the ‘hard kernel of architecture’. Reuse in architecture confronts us with the residue of time: a place, a building, a bygone typology, materials, atmosphere, fragments of a history of use. That is what we must work with. And what you did was to listen. You adapted, restored, added. Not too much. Not too little. Just enough.

With your architecture, you weave a web of time that connects past, present and an unknown future. That delicate handling of time is what makes Kasteel exceptional. The way you turned an absence—the lack of connections between classrooms—into the very heart of the project. How a simple breakthrough creates an enfilade that gives direction to contemporary learning. How something as practical as the eternal shortage of storage space becomes part of the atmosphere of a classroom. How a covered walkway links staircases and, in doing so, turns a playground into the heart of a building. How your architecture remains restrained yet assured; whispering, almost fragile, and confident at the same time.

What you have created both moves and overwhelms, and it is precisely that which makes Kasteel so remarkable. It deserves all our admiration—and, in this case, the Transformation and Renovation Award.

With warm and collegial regards,

On behalf of the jury of the ARC25 Transformation and Renovation Award,
Jan Peter Wingender"

Jury Report