Description

The starting point and inspiration for this project was the site, a flat lowland agricultural area with a patchwork of orchards and related sheds and small outbuildings providing a distinctive landscape within which the new school is located. Despite the fact that this is a large building comprising over 4,000 square metres of accommodation, the designers were determined to create a broken, fragmented form, which they believed was an important architectural motif to lighten its presence within the rustic setting. The result is a large building, which is surprisingly compact and low key especially when viewed from a distance. The compact appearance is partly a result of the tripartite twisted plan organisation adopted by the designers; it is a Y shaped plan which works well in conjunction with three distinct functional zones identified by the client, one being for sports activities, one for classrooms and academic activities and finally a wing for the entrance and administration. The car park grid corresponds to the building grid, in some ways a progressive philosophy, when so many large secondary schools of this type are surrounded by a sea of parked cars. The designers have deliberately set out to contain them within the fabric of the architecture, and to good effect.

Within this overall strategy, three classrooms are grouped around an open courtyard, each contained by the tight structural form within the long arm of the Y. The courtyards provide a communal space for students to mingle within each year group, allowing light and air to filter into the deep, tightly organised plan and creating important intermediary spaces between the inside and the outside. All classrooms are orientated towards the east, only the service areas and administration offices get direct afternoon sun. A broad triple-height central spine, which is top-lit and highly ventilated, connects the whole teaching wing together. The recurring theme of the ‘internal street’ within large linear secondary school buildings works particularly well here with curved upper galleries providing a plastic spatial form which is full of drama and movement. Because of its complex geometry the building, highly modulated by the designers’ subtle manipulation of natural light from both the side and the top, offers an engaging social landscape.

In some senses it is surprising to find such a large development in this isolated setting. The architectural treatment is careful to create an environment, which is legible to its users yet full of intriguing spaces, dramatic collisions of geometry and form both inside and outside. The architects explain the building as ‘a game of roofs’, which is a neat way to explain the initial inspiration and its adoption as a generator of form. However, it is much more than this, the result being a most unusual and successful building. In an age where so many school buildings promote the sense of institutional control, this is a building full of poetic moments and inspiring architectural details which promotes a sense of natural relaxed informality, an anti-institutional school.

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Originally published in: Mark Dudek, Schools and Kindergartens: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2015.