Description

The Bexley Business Academy in southeast London is one of the prototypes for the new generation of secondary schools in the UK. The idea is to bring a touch of market driven commercialism to the world of education. Where this vision manifests itself most obviously is in the design of the building. Walk through the doors of Bexley, and the interior immediately feels more like a corporate headquarters than a school. From the entrance and reception desk, visitors have views into a large top-lit atrium space and beyond to the restaurants, meeting rooms and classes, some of which take place in open-plan areas. To make the banking idea more explicit, the entrance atrium even has a raised stage area to mimic the dealing floors to be found in the City of London.

Even traditional closed classrooms are mostly glazed to make the activities transparent. The use of a structural steel frame gives plenty of scope for future changes to the form of individual rooms. At present the basic layout follows a traditional programme with four class bases of 60 square metres for each year group. Each classroom has flat screen Apple Macs with teachers standing at interactive white boards.

The scheme is organised around three glazed courtyards, each with a different functional theme; there is the entrance or business court, a technology court and an art court. When we visited there was a still life art class taking place with the group clustered around easels in the art court. Users are made constantly aware of the whole school community simply because they can generally see what everyone else is doing.

According to lead architect, Spencer de Grey, the scheme’s sponsors took some lessons from the architects’ own office layout in Battersea, which consists of open-plan working areas with discrete bays off the main spaces to provide for quieter and more contemplative activities. ‘The main emphasis is on transparency to create a different slant on the normal educational experience‘, he says. There is a radical agenda here which raises real questions about how far change in architectural typologies can successfully mediate between the traditional pillars of education and the government’s desire for more work-savvy school-leavers.

Perhaps inevitably, the flaws in this approach can be seen in the somewhat closed-off nature of the building. It largely ignores its surrounding site and tends to function as an internalised world where students can, if they choose, remain indoors throughout the day; and many do. With its single entry point and constant surveillance which the layout enables, this is an inherently secure environment which feels somewhat institutional. Time will tell if it wears well at the hands of subsequent generations of school students. However, in its pristine new condition, it is very much a place to be seen by both staff and students alike. It is a building which makes education sexy.

---

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