SCHOOLS FOR THE FUTURE DfES Exemplar School Design Solutions Secondary Team F January 2004 Compendium

ALSOP A successful project is all about building a combined design team and an integrated, holistic design process. It requires a tight knit team of talented and experienced professionals, all best in their field, working together to create the best synergy. The Alsop design team members for the Schools for the Future project are:

ALSOP Design Team Leader Architecture Landscape Interior Design Graphics Computer Animation Urban Design

BURO HAPPOLD A 'one stop shop' for engineering services Structural engineering Building services Environmental and Sustainable Design Fire engineering

MARK DUDEK Educational Adviser

STUDIO FAB Workshop Facilitator

DAVIS LANGDON & EVEREST Cost Contol Benchmarking and cost modelling M&E lifts cost consultancy Costs in use and whole life cost Sustainability cost consultancy Value/Risk management Facade costing

MILLER CONSTRUCTION Contractor Buildability Design management Construction programming Supply Chain Partnering

ALSOP ��������� ������ ����� INTRODUCTION

Every school has its own individual aspirations and identity. If the design was repeated, it would require adaption to fit each site and community. We are committed to community architecture of the broadest sense, involving a full spectrum of users and eliciting their aspirations for the school environment they are to inhabit. To take the design forward, an integrated and inclusive design process is necessary to create an effective learning environment. Ownership of the design and participation in process is essential to the final outcome.

We have worked with the head teacher, staff and pupils of our Partner School, Parrs Wood Technology College in . The Partner School has acted as our surrogate client and provided the stimulus to look beyond the brief and incorporate their aspirations and needs.

We passionately believe that the school should embrace the needs of all users and there should be a positive relationship between the school and the local community. Our 'community campus' proposals, we believe, present a clearer picture of how an extended school in an inner city location should develop to respond to the needs of the local community. From our discussions with Mark Dudek and Wendy Parmley – the Principal of an existing inner city school – we believe this can be taken further so that the school for the future would establish social, educational and commercial links with its community, both locally and further afield. The links would benefit the school educationally, culturally and generate additional income. It would also encourage adults back into the educational environment where, by a process of retraining and re-skilling, they are enabled to make a positive contribution On a constrained inner city site the school is raised above the ground level on columns so back into the community. that the landscape of the street can flow beneath.

Central to our concept of the community campus is the idea of a new 'street' as the centre of the design. This is programmed with new functions and uses some of which were previously exclusive to the school and others that are new and contribute to the community and the life of the street. The street is part of a larger public realm that extends beyond the school and forms new connections with the existing network of streets, paths and gardens. The site is opened up to make it more permeable and landscaped to create a variety of outdoor spaces. Some of these form part of an 'informal curriculum' or 'learning landscape' that encourages social interaction and student ownership.

On site F the school is a multi-storey solution layered over a landscape of learning. DESIGN PHILOSOPHY We were asked to look initially at a confined site in an inner city location: site F. A number of proposals Bookcase have been prepared for site F based on the core Atrium brief and variations, including a 'community campus'. In parallel with these developments, the design team has considered how the generic elements of the scheme can be applied on other sites; demonstrating adaptability at the macro Test Bed scale by examining a number of alternative arrangements on a less confined urban site.

Street

Four distinct learning environments have emerged as a kit of parts: the 'bookcase', 'test-bed', atrium and 'pebbles'. The bookcase anticipates the general teaching areas changing in response to developments in the curriculum, ICT innovation and pastoral care. The Test-bed allows the school to adjust over time its mix and priorities in practical learning.

The test-bed also contains the school’s vertical circulation, connected to a series of bridges suspended within the atrium. The atrium is the vibrant heart of the school full of social and learning activity and in the Model 1 and 2 designs incorporates a street. This forms a route through the building at ground level. Large pebble-like structures accommodate the school’s main hall, dining and sports facilities.

Traditional multi-storey school Model 1: Medium rise, confined site Model 2: Mixed mode, constrained site

Model 3: Citadel, tight urban site Model 4: Mixed street, tight urban site Model 5: Community campus, urban site

The variations possible with the multi-storey design that has evolved represent a number of possible models for a school for the future. Each can respond to different site conditions and environments:

Model 1: Medium rise, confined site Model 3: Citadel, tight urban site Model 5: Community Campus, urban site This represents the simplest of the school Where the site is limited in its size and access, the This incorporates an extended school brief and models. It assumes a four storey building with functions previously in the landscape as pavilions integrates the school into the heart of its urban single sided ventilation on a site of at least 1.8ha can be tucked beneath the mass of school to context by making it the centre for learning in with little external noise or air pollution. Many of reduce the overall footprint of the building. the community. The street is now fully developed the larger school functions are integrated into the with school and community activity. Key worker landscape as free standing pavilions. Model 4: Mixed street, tight urban site housing is incorporated at roof level to create a On an inner city site with good access and thriving mixed use development. Model 2: Mixed mode, constrained site permeability but a very limited site area, a In a similar site where the external environment new street beneath the school stitches the is more polluted or noisy, fresh air ducts bring air building back into the urban fabric. The street is into the general teaching areas and chimneys programmed with school activities shared with ventilate the atrium and study areas. the local community outside of school hours. A loose arrangement of objects containing the hall, sports facilities and community programmes are scattered along the street like pebbles along a river bed.

Test Bed Atrium

The 'test bed' has evolved through the teams desire to embrace off site The atrium is the soft centre of the school where the school opens up into a construction and explore it as the driver for an evolving programme of village of activities coming together and legible within the excitement of practical learning activities. The 'test bed' is vertically stacked as a four a larger volume. Our atrium contains the schools reception, doubling as storey series of layers containing different types of practical learning an exhibition space to display the student’s artwork, designs and projects, activity expressed in different materials and forms. impressing upon students, staff and visitors the confidence of the school. Sixth form study areas reside at the top and opportunities for social It has been designed to offer flexibility in the arrangement and layout of gathering and informal learning areas are interspersed between, serviced the practical learning areas. By their nature they require larger room sizes with ICT links in the transition to a wireless system of laptops or tablets. than the bookcase and we have set out the northern side of the school to accommodate the largest practical classroom. Play decks are incorporated Our workshops with the partner school identified early on a need for social as part of the floor plate to provide outdoor breakout and teaching space. spaces or 'chill out spaces' for year groups to meet between lessons outside of the formal classroom structure. The elements that form the test bed do not have to be limited to the brief. It might possible to have short term loans or sponsorship of prefabricated We perceived that a variety of semi-private and private learning areas, set green houses, experimental weather labs or observatory pods that could aside from the primary circulation routes, would successfully realise the be added to play decks for a year before moving onto another school. atrium as an alternative learning environment. A number of these areas are housed within the two atrium chimneys that act as visible engines for the distribution of fresh air around the building. By combining the building services with learning activities in a very direct way the school starts to tell its own story about its responsibility to, and its impact upon, the environment.

A series of laboratories and workshops interspersed with softer amorphous shaped towers that plug into the atrium along the north side. Pebbles

Large spaces used by the community outside the school day are accommodated in pebble-like structures that are arranged as pavilions in the landscape in the Model 1 and 2 designs. In the Model 3, 4 and 5 designs, on a tight inner city site, these are tucked under the raised building, arranged in a secure cluster on the south side of the site linked Sketch images investigating the street environment on site F and by a flowing landscape of dining decks, outdoor learning and garden spaces. the quality of the public realm.

Typical short section through the design on site F showing the school raised above the ground plane with a street beneath. The atrium is populated with a series of alternative learning environments that provide informal learning and social spaces.

The internal elevation of the bookcase is broken up by a vibrant pattern of solid walls incorporating lockers, seating and display cases that enhance the circulation galleries.

Bookcase

Our initial concept for a vertically stacked school arranged either side of a central atrium has been strengthened by dedicating one side of the atrium to flexible learning and classrooms. This we have called the 'bookcase'.

The bookcase is a continuous uninterrupted learning zone spread over 4 floors of the building. It can be subdivided into cellular spaces to meet current curriculum demands and class sizes. The classrooms benefit from excellent daylighting from glazed curtain walling on the south façade and from borrowed light in the atrium. The floor to ceiling is a generous 3m to increase daylight penetration and to assist natural ventilation.

As the impact of ICT begins to change the school’s learning environment Exploratory sketch for a typical we have anticipated class sizes expanding and becoming more open floor level that examines how the plan with a variety of learning activities taking pace within a single area. general teaching areas can become By opening up the bookcase into the atrium and widening the circulation increasingly open plan and begin to locally the classroom can become ever larger and increasingly open plan. occupy the atrium environment. Environmental Performance

A school building must not be frozen in time and must be able to adapt to changes in the curriculum to reflect the wide range of users and activities. The engineering systems are designed to allow flexibility within the learning environment to suit the future needs of the staff and students. At a larger scale the design represents a building solution capable of being adapted to any site including those with noise and air pollution, brownfield sites and sites with restricted access in urban environments. Cut-away section through deeper practical learning space.

Site F is typical of an inner city site with poor air quality and background noise from the urban environment. Ventilation strategy diagram for site F.

The building location, orientation and form The whole life energy consumption of the Free thermal storage has been optimised to the responds to the external environment to gain school is enhanced by the construction benefit of the energy profile of the school. benefit from daylight, the solar path and methods and use of materials, the energy prevailing winds whilst minimising the impact efficient environmental strategies and the The use of energy has been taken a stage further of external noise and air pollution. future adaptability of the building. The optimum by considering a variation that has zero fossil orientation of the building is on a predominantly fuel energy in use. This option considers the use A mixed mode solution for the environmental east-west axis. Great efforts have been made to of alternative technologies such as combined strategy has been adopted for the learning opt for a solution that only uses the mechanical heat and power, ground source heat pumps, areas in all the design models. Fresh clean air is ventilation when required by the occupants. photo-voltaics and solar collectors. drawn in at low level and distributed around the building through the raised floor voids.

The strategy for the internal environmental of the learning spaces relies on the following elements:

• minimising solar and internal heat gains; • maximising the thermal mass of the building; • ensuring effective ventilation throughout the year – controlled ventilation in peak winter and summer; • large openable areas providing a naturally ventilated solution when the external air temperatures match the internal requirements for both ventilation and temperature; • in the summer the mixed mode ventilation operates over night to provide a secure way of cooling the exposed concrete slabs ready for slow release of the 'coolth' the following day; • the mechanical ventilation system has been designed to achieve low fan power consumption with a simple control strategy; • acoustic separation is achieved to the requirements of BB93. Cut-away section through general classroom environment. Learning Environment

The future learning environment has to be able to anticipate and adapt to future changes in the curriculum. We anticipate class sizes expanding and becoming more open plan with a variety of activities taking place within a single area.

Community Campus

The concept at the heart of the livable community is the integration of learning into every aspect of contemporary living. The 'community campus' will provide a secure, seamless environment which nurtures many different, coexistant activities blending to enrich the educational curriculum and simultaneously foster an enduring community ethos for future generations.

Currently people are much more aggressive in defining their own individual context. In order to define the community context, a project needs to be both site specific and sensitive to the needs of the specific user. Scale is a key component in defining such a context. Characteristics of scale in schools include not only an explicit connection to the surrounding community, but also a sense of arrival, a variety of individual and group learning places, connections between users, and above all, an ability for users to affect their own environment.

Typical section through the community campus design showing key worker housing at high level.

The street is the centre of the design and is populated with new functions and uses. Some of the accommodation exclusively within the school is now relocated at ground level, for example the library now serves the school and the community. Practical and vocational subjects taught in the street aim to enhance school students’ experience of the world by relating education directly to the social and commercial activities of the world around them.

Micro

Macro Adaptability and Flexibility

The layout and construction of many new school buildings are unable to teaching or practical learning space can be delivered within these areas respond to simple changes in the curriculum and the use of evolving new by moving and relocating partitions. This allows for the anticipated future ICT, often resulting in a school having to make unsatisfactory compromises change from traditional classroom 'boxes' to larger semi-open plan areas. in order to make changes. Our proposals demonstrate how a school can respond to this critical need for adaptability at a ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ scale. When applied to a tight urban site, the provision of 'play decks' within the school builds in additional flexibility by creating outdoor breakout and We have set out the school with flexibility as a key design driver. The layout teaching space that can be enclosed to provide additional accommodation delivers the optimum widths for general teaching and practical learning in the future without having to extend the school. in two linear floor plates either side of the atrium. Any size of general Site E

In parallel with developing proposals for Site F the design team have considered how the generic elements of the scheme can be applied across other sites; demonstrating adaptability at the macro scale by examining a number of alternative arrangements on Site E.

The school on site E is similar in layout to the design on site F as it is formed from the same kit of parts, the 'test-bed' and 'book case' with an atrium between. Site E is larger than site F so there is no advantage in raising the building above the ground on columns. Play decks are not required as these can be accommodated in the landscape of the larger site. As a consequence the school is a shorter four storey building with the larger elements of the brief now arranged as pavilions in the landscape. The street is incorporated within the school rather than beneath it, forming a route through the building at ground level.

The school is planned to allow a large part of the site to be given over to other community uses as well as ensuring that many of the school functions are available for use outside of the school day. Plan of site E showing the pebbles as pavilions within the landscape and the street incorporated within the atrium as a route through the school at ground level.

Site F: Tight inner city site

The school on a tight inner city site is formed from the same kit of parts: the test bed and bookcase with an atrium between. Site F is only 0.9ha and must include a multi-use games area to reduce the need to access off-site playing fields, so the building is raised above the ground on columns with the larger elements of the brief tucked beneath the building. ‘Play decks’ are required to make up for the lack of space for informal and social area in the site landscape. As a consequence the building is longer and five storeys overall.

The school is raised up to form a new public realm at ground level: a street that a living part of the community. Lifting the school separates the dedicated teaching areas away from those functions shared with the community and creates a secure school environment at high level.

The landscape of the street is layered across the site and beyond so that new connections are formed with existing green spaces and the rest of the site is opened up and made accessible. The school entrance is directly off the street with an entrance foyer and security point before an escalator and stair rise up to the school reception level.

Typical short section through the Model 1 design on site E , with the base of the atrium forming the street through the centre of the school. THE VISION

There is an assumption that 'good architecture' doing, and in this case a large factory would be the focuses for Sport, Science, Agriculture, can help to improve education by providing a ideal as a means of observing a school community Culture etc. all linked by a fleet of school buses more stimulating environment. Environment is trying to make sense of a large space. To be able which in themselves can be used as seminar undoubtedly important, but it is not the only way to observe the creation of spaces, nests and rooms in the many towns and villages in the that architects can help. We are not only privacy by different groups of people would be area. The centres of excellence also offer much architects, but parents, observers, holiday highly instructive and in itself be useful in needed facilities to the local communities in the makers, commuters et al. On top of which some exploring what a school might be in the future. region. The relatively public nature of this of us work in a very broad band of businesses, infrastructural school contributes to the region by people and problems. We are therefore in a very Schools need to develop a sense of belonging example. The opportunity for the architect to good position to contribute to the issues within the communities they exist in. At present consider environments for learning is a surrounding education and assist in imagining a they are very often a set of buildings set within a wonderful opportunity but the initial tools of future beyond the physical re-examination of the fence. They are separated from the world in a visioning should not be constrained by fabric of a building. very similar way to prisons. As we have shown in conventional idea. Architects are well placed to this design, one possibility or model for a school imagine the unimaginable, to dream the Flexibility and Adaptability are key to the is the street: a public place that not only contains impossible and think the unthinkable. We wish to exemplar design brief. I always suspect, the school but other aspects of everyday life. As join the wider debate. however, that any teacher, parent or student, we have explored in our community campus would be excited at the prospect of a large variant, there could be a link between 'earning Will Alsop, October 2003 warehouse that would offer maximum flexibility and learning' – new models of the supermarket, by allowing each group to invent their own a department store of learning, Local Youth learning environment. Parliament accessible to all, gallery of artwork, music department as mini concert venue, cafes, As a base proposition, this would allow and bars, newsstands, school television, cinema as encourage schools to break away from the film club and spaces for making lots of noise traditional requirements that most would expect (clubbing) etc. This model for the school can also to find in a school. if through testing we found a be part of a mixed development with living way of satisfying environmental needs, it could spaces and workspaces from which revenue or be very revealing to look at the use of the large capital could be put back into the school. industrial shed as a container for exploration. As an extension of the 'test bed' ideas set out in this Some schools could be explored which relate to design, the idea of a test bed school could be larger areas or regions. For example the 15.4 very useful, as it is often the case that the written million people who live in the M62 corridor could brief can only be achieved by the formation of an easily support a series of centres of excellence abstraction based on known practices and spread along the motorway. New, or existing procedures. It could be appropriate to learn by service areas could become the sites to act as

Will Alsop is one of the UKs most prominent architects working today. With projects like the 1999 Library he has captured a spirit of exuberance befitting the ongoing renaissance of the English town and cityscape. Current projects include Rethinking Barnsley for Yorkshire Forward, the c/Plex arts centre for West Bromwich, the for 's , a new Ontario College of Art & Design in and the Goldsmiths New Arts Complex in London.

Architects are well placed to imagine the unimaginable, to dream the impossible and think the unthinkable. The paintings illustrated here begin to explore alternative learning environments. ALSOP London Parkgate Studio 41 Parkgate Road London SW11 4NP Tel: +44 (0)20 7978 7878 Fax: +44 (0)20 7978 7879 Web: www.alsoparchitects.com