In 2014 Jasper Stevens and Karel Verstraeten founded FELT. That same year they won the Open Call for a primary school in Zarren. The school, which was put into use in 2019, reveals the office’s design approach. FELT carried out a sharp analysis of the primal Flemish context and created a school environment that fits soberly into its surroundings, while providing surprises at the right moment with a thought-through interaction with the landscape and meticulously detailed interiors.

The village centre of Zarren, in the Westhoek region, is formed by a junction of two connecting roads. Reconstruction architecture from the 1920s defines its character: a ribbon of brick houses with red-tiled roofs. The centre is ringed by allotments, and beyond them lies the countryside: historical windmills, a ridge, a stream valley with gnarled poplars and pollard willows, sheds made of concrete slabs and corrugated iron. The new school building has been erected in a second construction line along the connecting road. Felt was inspired by the potpourri of building styles and designed a school that establishes a link between the village fabric, which grew organically, the allotments, and nature.