Description

Over the coming decade virtually every existing school within the UK will be significantly upgraded or completely rebuilt. Profound debates have taken place over recent years as to the best way to design the coming generation of school buildings. This debate has focused on the need to build in new ways which are appropriate to the 21st century. Many believe that the traditional school solution is an obsolete model and needs to be radically up-dated. Good innovative architecture, they would argue, has the power to transform the way in which young people view education and will make them see it in a more positive light. This was the scenario for a government sponsored competition to design a number of new schools speculatively. The designs were real in all except the fact that they would not actually be built on the designated sites. Instead they were to be explorations of new ideas by architectural practices with a high reputation. This was intended to inspire and guide future school designers and promote cutting-edge thinking.

One of the most interesting schemes to emerge was this multi-storey proposal for an inner city site in south London. Based on the principle that different teaching modes would encourage new ways of learning, the proposal comprises four floors of school accommodation, elevated above the ground on stilts. Thus ground floor areas are part of the surrounding sports and recreation areas. The cross section illustrates the breakdown of accommodation with fairly conventional classrooms on the sunny south side with more practical accommodation such as art and science labs on the north side. In the middle there is a four-storey high atrium with break-out areas at each level slung between the circulation decks. These are articulated as freeform organic shapes which lend the area a strange space age feel, unlike any conventional school building. The school’s heating and cooling systems are deliberately emphasised within the framework of the overall design with two big cooling stacks at the centre of the atrium.

Throughout the scheme there is a sense of a building communicating with its users and the surrounding environment in many different ways. On one elevation, façades are brightly coloured with moveable sun shades along the perimeter which enable the staff and students to have a degree of control over heating and cooling. Having this sense of control of their environment develops spatial awareness and helps students to relate to their building. Even the plant room is centrally located with glazed walls so that students can see and begin to decipher the systems which support and control their environment. Strange rock-like shapes appear at different places on the roof or protrude from the façades on the north side. It is possible to read the different forms of accommodation as they are strongly emphasised. The building is like a cryptic puzzle, constantly unfolding and sending out overt and subtle messages to students who have a natural interest in their environment.

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