Celebrating beautiful school buildings

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) have named a number of schools as winners of its regional awards. The buildings are amongst the best architecture around the UK. The schools selected showcase a commitment to designing and developing educational spaces for the improvement and enhancement of pupil and teacher’s lives.

More regional winners will be announced in the coming weeks, and all winning buildings will be in the running for highly coveted RIBA National Awards, which will be announced on 27 June 2019.

Commenting on London’s winning buildings, RIBA London director, Dian Small, said: “Each year RIBA London Awards celebrate a diverse and eclectic range of project types and scales and celebrate the very best new buildings across the Capital. 2019 winning projects include beautifully-designed school extensions, several significant public sector housing projects, state of the art office buildings and exquisite conservation projects, which breathe new life into some of London’s greatest treasures. Once again, all winning buildings demonstrate the extremely high standard of design quality in London and the breadth of its architectural output.”

Alleyn’s Lower School has won a London RIBA Award. The new building has been successfully achieved through the building’s layout of classrooms, which are arranged around a top-lit central space, and the warm palette of robust materials, which include timber and brick.

The building, designed by Tim Ronalds Architects, makes a positive contribution to the wider urban context through its definition of the triangular site. Its sensitive approach to scale and massing ensure it does not overwhelm residential neighbours. Its distinctive appearance – achieved by its form and restrained brick detailing – creates a readily identifiable landmark for the school.

The triangular building maximises the best use of the site, and creates a clear, legible and easy-to use building internally. The classrooms have been successfully distributed in clusters of two, grouped around the three sides of the atrium over two floors.

The upper classrooms are particularly successful, as they utilise the pitched roof space to create a spatial characteristic reminiscent of home. The building’s layout has eliminated the need for long, intimidating corridors. This has resulted in circulation spaces being cleverly integrated with social spaces.

The central space is small but creates an intimate space for the children to gather and socialise. Its size has the added benefit of creating visual connections between teachers and the children, offering important non-verbal reassurance to children who feel unsure in their new environment.

The spatial arrangement of classrooms in a triangular form around the central atrium creates an intimate building that is attuned to the scale and spatial requirements of the 300 pupils who occupy the building.

It is abundantly apparent that the architect has given careful consideration to the needs of the children and their teachers. The building provides a safe, welcoming and nurturing environment for them to learn, socialise and grow, setting a fantastic precedent for future school projects.

Eleanor Palmer Primary School’s new Science Lab has also scooped a RIBA London Award. It was conceived as a ‘wonder room’; a place for discovery and experimentation. The small, wooden lab, designed by AY Architects, accommodates classes and after school clubs for up to 31 pupils (aged 3-11 years) and is a shared resource for the school, neighbouring community and other schools. The modest construction budget, partly funded with section 106 money deployed by Camden Council as part of its program for developing science, technology, engineering and maths in primary schools, is used to very good effect.

It a is a carefully crafted, environmentally minded, sensitive addition to the local urban fabric. It responds to complex site and boundary conditions. The columned functional rear facade is built against a Victorian boundary wall and punctured by a single deep-silled window providing both glimpses onto a noisy road and a shop window display opportunity to signal to and engage the neighbourhood.

A pair of triangular exposed spruce frame roof volumes constructed from sawn spruce beams and joists in standard sizes are lifted above the main space. They present only their apexes to the road, visually masking their impact and giving generous daylight, ventilation and additional height for experiments in the plywood lined interior. The legible timber frame construction promises to engage children with its structural and material logic and the architectural intent is for children to be able to unpack and analyse the parts of the building intuitively.

The glazed wall to the playground lined with sinks, work surfaces and shelving and the functional rear wall with display cabinets filled with artefacts gathered by the school and specimens brought in by children, define an adaptable free space that visually connects to the external environment. The details, internally and externally, are enjoyably child scaled and the use of a linear bench along the full width of the façade serves to unite previously disjointed playground areas.

RIBA says this is an excellent example of simple, thoughtful passive environmental design and a notable achievement for everyone involved.

Another winner of the RIBA London Award was Torriano Primary School’s STEM Lab, by Hayhurst and Co. It was developed by remodelling an existing two-storey ‘turret’ at the top of a historical, locally listed building and creates a small roof-top extension with an external learning terrace.

The ‘turret’ previously housed IT rooms with mezzanine floors but has been opened up to the full extent of its internal space. Windows have been refurbished and fitted with remote shading and opening devices to control light and afford natural ventilation.

This area forms the main activity zone and it features irregular, CNC cut, laminated ply ribs which splay and arch across the space to define a secondary layer within it. These ‘portals’ include openings, fixings, crossbars and pulleys which facilitate activities to enhance practical teaching such as enabling objects to be hung or fabric suspended. Star constellations are also CNC milled into the faces of the timber.

A plywood box constructed offset staircase gives access to a small mezzanine which enables students to gain additional height when undertaking practical experiments.

Clever uses of minimal space abound such as fold-down demonstration desks at two different heights for different age students and shelving nooks exploited at every opportunity.

A bright yellow/green marmoleum flooring links seamlessly through to the new built part of the scheme, a simple pitched roof construction extending over what was a flat roof. Here more light floods in via a large skylight and timber framed single and double doors give access to an external, south-facing semicircular terrace above a curved stair core below. This allows views back to the gable end of the new extension which is clad in polished stainless steel shingles, which glimmer in the sun and reflect the sky.

Northampton International Academy, by Architecture Initiative, won a RIBA East Midlands Award. It is a 2,200-pupil academy built in an early 1980s postal sorting office.

Boldly chopping lightwells through the existing waffle slab structure the architects set up a clear language of new teaching interventions in graphic black and white with oversized lecture and music boxes helping to articulate new cafeteria and break out spaces. These are flooded with natural light and surrounded by new workshops that celebrate the existing scale of the sorting office spaces.

A building of this size has several grand staircases, each with a black armature and flashes of colour that help orientate you around this vast building without resorting to large amounts of dull wayfinding. Where signage is needed the architects have developed a brand for the academy that is inspired by the sorting office typeface, a nice tactile touch. Exploring the building is somewhat like walking around a hilltop village with glimpsed views to all levels, departments and years with the sixth form due to inhabit the uppermost level.

There is an existing sorting office staff canteen and rooftop courtyard being the perfect size for a spectacular new sports hall, clad in plywood panelling with ribs of lighting – the citadel at the top of the village.

Major interventions into the façades provide new classroom windows and from the main road a new entrance plaza with a set of triumphal steps leads you up to two entrance boxes. A highly polished mirrored veil, that reflects the sky and buildings of the surrounding local community in its fabric, connects these entrances.

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