The Centre also provides community facilities including crèche, drop in facilities, consultation spaces for health professionals, training space for parents and an open plan office space for the local Primary Care Trust. The building forms part of London Borough of Hackney’s first phase of Children Centre’s. The new Children’s Centre has been designed with a low embodied energy environmental approach and in keeping with the new office pods in the school (an earlier completed enabling project by Haverstock Associates in 2005). The building is a timber structure with a suspended timber ground floor sat on innovative screw piles which can be recycled. To maximise natural light levels without undue heat loss an insulated translucent Danpal system has been used extensively. There is a protected courtyard deck for outdoor play. The central ‘egg’ brings together the existing school building with the new centre and creates a social and training space for parents. The building is naturally ventilated with a green roof.
Photography by Dennis Gilbert/View
