International School of Brussels High School

  • LocationBrussels, Belgium
  • TypeNew Construction
  • Size62,431 SF
  • RecognitionInternational Baccalaureate (IB)

With a 40-acre campus, set within the Forêt de Soignes, International School of Brussels (ISB) is uniquely positioned to offer an outstanding education in a safe, secure and spectacular environment. Students at ISB come from over 60 countries, giving the school an international flavor and global emphasis. The school is committed to sustainable environmental solutions and wanted the new high school to not just be innovative, but to also be as green as possible.

Through the development of a comprehensive master plan, Fielding was able to support the International School of Brussels’ learning goals and design a new building to support a whole campus transformation. The project was a completely new approach to high school with each floor designed to support thematic learning experiences such as STEAM and Global Citizenship.

Collaborating with Fielding was a revelation. [They] focused first on the design of learning and then on the design of the learning spaces. The end result was transformative, a building that is light, transparent, flexible, and critically owned by the learners. It has been a culture changer.”

Fielding determined the design of the high school would include as many environmentally positive design features to reflect the ISB ethos. Special consideration was given to achieving maximum daylighting through building alignment and the use of transparency. And during construction, students were housed in a lower-cost renovation of an unused building on campus, enabling them to experiment with innovative spaces built through reuse.

The ISB High School is designed to interconnect floors and learning spaces both visually and physically, making it cohesive and easy to move through. The presentation gathering stair links two floors and offers flexible use for the entire cycle of the building. The use of transparency links areas both within and without the facility, and the unified colors and repeated motifs also add to the visual unification of spaces. ISB is proud to be the only school in the country to have been awarded a second Eco-Dynamism Star by the Brussels Environment Agency and invited by the Directorate for Energy and Transport of the European Commission to become a Campaign Associate in the Sustainable Energy Europe Campaign.

Design Patterns

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Daylighting
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Transparency
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Gathering Stairs
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Active Hallway
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Agile Lab Space
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