Tuesday 4 June 2013

La Roue school

I had La Roue school on my radar for quite some time. After all, it is a registered monument very close to our place, so it would be a shame not to visit it soon enough. It still took us a while to hunt it down, but thanks to that we managed to visit beautiful area of La Roue district. During that visit we saw the school from the outside.


I must admit when we first arrived there I was thinking "hmm... so this is it... I guess it must've been impressive at a time".


So it has some small decorative accents. The clock tower looks nice. But as far as to registering it as a monument? Oh well, I've seen worst things on the list... (forgive my ignorance, maybe it is in itself a gem of modernistic architecture, what do I know).

We took some pictures from the outside, including an old-school poster from 60.


More by accident than anything else we peeked in the inside and saw what was the real reason for a protection. That's why we decided to come back when the school is open. Before taking pictures inside though, we asked the direction nicely if that would be no problem (going around primary school taking pictures without introducing yourself might be not well seen).

As a side note, people seem to find it really hard to acknowledge, that we're doing it as a hobby. We've been already taken for historians, teachers and architects, and every time it takes time to make them truly believe that we consider what we do fun :)

Anyway, interior of the school hides a little gem being the stained glass work.


It is signed by the name of Fernand Crickx, who seem to have done quite some stained glass work all over Brussels. The building itself was designed by Henri Wildenblanck and constructed 1938.


The stained glass along with the chandeliers make quite a nice impression. What seems to be stage, is also a passage to big gym. Super smart move - they get lots of space for their decoration of all the off-stage stuff during performances, while at the same time no space is wasted on regular basis.


This place is not only registered monument, but also mentioned in the yet again recommended Secret Brussels book, as a recommended place to visit when around La Roue. Two points for one visit!




Yes, I took the picture of a boring door. I just like how the lettering fits the style of the building.

On the side, despite posts not appearing that often (using a computer with our daughter around is a no-go, and after she's asleep we're usually busy or dead tired), we are not totally lazy in the blog context. We are "working" on one bigger project, that I must say I am truly excited about! Unfortunately tt will still take some time before it can appear here, and in the meantime, I hope to keep the weekly-basis short posts coming up.