The International School of Brussels (ISB) is an English-language school that provides an education to over 1,500 students aged 2½ to 19 from 62 countries. The 40-acre secure campus lies in the Brussels commune of Watermael-Boitsfort, about 9 kilometers southeast of the city center. The new ISB High School designed by Fielding Nair International is organized by curriculum themes with a Learning Commons and a wide variety of education spaces on each floor. The building is the very first facility designed to support the Common Ground Curriculum.
The Common Ground Collaborative (CGC) is a global, non-profit network of educators, schools and social entrepreneurs. They see learning as the key human capacity and are committed to building that capacity in ways that are simple, smart and sustainable; the newly developed Common Ground Curriculum is designed for student-centric learning.
This curriculum is a coherent framework designed to develop learning capacity in ways that are simple and flexible. The framework builds conceptual learning, competency learning and character learning into an interactive triple helix that provides the DNA of the CGC. The helix is embedded in a learning context of connected, illustrative content, the eight Human Commonalities, selected for their importance and relevance to diverse learners.
Innovative spaces in the school include a Gathering Atrium that serves as a formal presentation space and informal study area. By eliminating corridors, Learning Commons provides areas for student-centric activities like individual study and small group projects. The ample use of transparency creates a building where students can be passively supervised and assisted by teachers. Teachers act as coaches and mentors rather than being the single access point of knowledge.
