Nimeto Transformation of a Craft School / Maarten van Kesteren Architecten

MBO Nimeto is a vocational school for ‘creative space makers’, offering courses in painting, restoration, styling & presentation, sign making and the like. Its building is made up of two custom-designed vocational schools built around 1970; one was originally designed for the National Painters School, the other for the Netherlands Butchers School. They were connected by later additions, though a street separates them. Due to its many alterations over fifty years, the building’s layout had become unbalanced and suboptimal for Nimeto’s educational philosophy. Meanwhile, a growing number of students and new insights necessitated a thorough transformation.