The educational vision for the school is to work closely with the local community, including parents, local residents and businesses to develop a strong sense of community and values. The school will have capacity for 210 children aged 4 – 11 (mixed).
Located at a consolidated site consisting of a community hall and a former private school for boys, which is an impressive Victorian arts and craft school building dating from 1882. The proposal for the project is to expand the school across the enlarged site and sensitively remodel the existing school building to house all KS2 teaching accommodation, staff facilities, new main entrance and reception area with dedicated community room.
The aim of the school is to fully involve the community with the school, foster relationships and bring local business in to run workshops throughout the year. The existing community hall will be demolished and replaced with a new teaching wing specifically designed for delivering KS1 education, with all classrooms having direct access to covered external learning areas. This will house 3 classrooms on the ground floor and a spacious hall on the first floor which will act as the heart of the school catering for many different uses and groups throughout the day. Given the location of the school, the majority of pupils will be eligible for free school meals and the school ambition is that they will provide hot cooked meals for all of the children and staff. Lunch will be served at tables across two servings, with staff and children sitting together to eat.
The massing and materials of this building have been carefully considered to harmonise with the existing building with a simple palette of vertical cedar timber cladding, red brick and composite windows. The two buildings will be linked together by a new lightweight canopy which will form the entrance to the school site. Everyone enters the school through the same route past the WW2 war memorial located at the road entrance between the two buildings.
The design for the new building has been designed to be as efficient as possible with the build-up of the building fabric being carefully designed to provide a 10% reduction than current U-Values; air sourced heat pumps supplying the underfloor heating, natural cross ventilation to all teaching spaces and natural day lighting.
Sketches by Haverstock
