School Design - High-Grade Buildings

THERE WERE probably a fair few architects rolling their eyes at media pictures of Welsh teachers on a picket line, complaining that it was all the architect’s fault that their pupils were running amok – after all, school design has long been a political hot potato, with architects in the firing line.

When Michael Gove cancelled the ambitious Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme in 2010, he blamed it on ‘massive overspends, tragic delays, botched construction projects and needless bureaucracy’, adding later: ‘We won’t be getting any award-winning architects to design your school, because no one in this room is here to make architects richer.’

Alfreton Park School, Derbyshire Alfreton Park School won the 2024 RIBA East Midlands Building of the Year, when judges applauded its joyful colour scheme of jade green zinc and terracotta cladding. The building, which won an architectural competition by Derbyshire County Council, provided a replacement SEND school for children aged three to 19, and was created to be ‘of the hill, not on it’, fitting gracefully into the landscape and surrounding the youngsters with nature and space to enjoy the outdoors. Activities like trampolining are at the heart of the school, and details include ceilings that conceptually follow the line of the hillside, adding visual interest for pupils who may spend time on the floor looking up. Architect Curl La Tourelle Head Architecture Client Derbyshire County Council Executive delivery architect Maber Environmental Engineering Method Consulting Landscape design Wynne-Williams Associates Structural engineer Price & Myers Contractor Henry Brothers. Image Credit: Kilian O’sullivan

When BSF began in 2003, £55bn was allocated to rebuild every secondary school in England, with ‘inspirational buildings and state-of-the-art facilities for pupils and staff to make them feel valued and to encourage new ways of learning’. Some of the finished buildings did indeed live up to the goal – like the colourful, sustainable design for the Michael Tippett School in Lambeth by Marks Barfield Architects or AHMM’s Stirling Prize winner, Burntwood School in Wandsworth. But overall, just 180 schools were built, and a CABE audit of 52 designs deemed half to be ‘poor’ or ‘mediocre’, fuelling a government crackdown on ‘wasteful extravagance’ in educational architecture. New standards from 2010 enforced a 15% reduction in space for communal areas like corridors and canteens, and banned many possibilities for architectural creativity, including a veto on curved or glazed walls.

The result, today, is an environment where architects are often brought in at the last moment, to sign off cookie-cutter designs prepared by construction companies, and may have little chance to speak to teachers or pupils, the ultimate endusers. It’s an approach that Richard Cottrell, director at Cottrell & Vermeulen Architecture, which has designed more than 50 schools over 30 years, finds particularly frustrating. ‘The best way of designing a school, or indeed designing anything, is to work with the end user – the problem with public buildings is that the client is often not the user, and in the case of schools, there’s a deliberate policy to keep users at arms’ length from the design process. Architects are even chaperoned in meetings with schools in case we offer too much!’

Thornhill Primary School, Islington A new library at Thornhill Primary School in Islington was designed with help from the children – all 400 pupils built a dream library model in a shoebox, with some of the resulting ideas being integrated into the final design. Client Thornhill Primary School Structural engineer Martin Redstone Associates Contractor Woodside Contracts + Hub Workshop. Image Credit: Jan Kattein Architects. Image Credit: Jan Kattein Architects

Cottrell, whose practice was awarded Building Design Education Architect of the Year three times, feels the changes have been for the worst: ‘There weren’t that many landmark buildings in BSF; a few get all the attention. Scrapping the scheme with the excuse that too much money was wasted on flamboyant buildings was, in my opinion, absolute rubbish. Now, as an architect designing a new school, you are likely to be employed by a building contractor, so design is no longer a priority and it’s all about cost. In the past few years, it’s been harder and harder to design state schools as we’re not involved early enough and it’s not perceived that architects can add any value as we might cost more and spend more.’

In some respects, the government’s firm guidelines on school design are a good thing. ‘The technical briefs that are issued by the Department of Education in terms of daylight and fresh air and temperature are pretty good,’ says Cottrell. ‘If you get the technical standards right you should provide a good space for learning. But how does it feel? In any other building in life that is considered important – think of the amount of money spent on office environments.’

Berendo Middle School, Los Angeles Some school design principles are universal, including the importance of access to nature, areas for casual socialising, and spaces that inspire physical activity, all of which have been shown to improve cognitive performance in the classroom. At Berendo Middle School, a new gym was combined with interesting green spaces, including a community plaza with native landscape, to promote student wellness. Architect CO Architects Client Los Angeles Unified School District. Image Credit: Nils Timm

Nick Hayhurst, director of Hayhurst and Co. Architects, was behind the RIBA National Award-winning Edith Neville Primary School near King’s Cross, where he was able to spend time tailoring the building to the local community. ‘The character of the internal spaces – the look and feel – was important. Often, school designs have a natural look, but Edith Neville talked about wanting the space to feel like a civic building rather than a school, not full of primary colours – they thought that was condescending and wanted it to be a civic building that was for children, so quite subdued and gallerylike so the children’s work would stand out as the focus.

Reggio School, Madrid Reggio School in Madrid was intended to arouse in children a desire for exploration and enquiry. Designed in conversation with teachers, students and parents, the compact, vertical school uses the adjacent public park for sports and play, encouraging interaction rather than segregation. Classrooms for younger students are on the ground floor, while upstairs, classrooms for older pupils are arranged around the lush, indoor garden, nourished with reclaimed water. The building has a pared-down construction, without cladding, wall linings or dropped ceilings, reducing material use by 48%. The distinctively exterior finish is a layer of yellow cork, specifically designed for the project, providing generous insulation and designed so that over time it will become a habitat for fungi, plants and animals. Architect Andrés Jaque/ Office for Political Innovation Landscape Mingobasarrate. Image Credit: José Hevia

‘The design can and should speak to a specific community; there’s no one-size-fitsall, what works in one community wouldn’t necessarily work in another. For example, Edith Neville was in a very tight urban area, where 80% of pupils lived in flats, so we put a special focus on outside space so those pupils get the chance to exercise their motor skills and run around. The school had an English country garden with trees and a quiet area, and logs to climb over – children living in King’s Cross don’t get to clamber over things on a regular basis and it prompts different types of play opportunities. But you wouldn’t do that in a rural community where many children live in houses with back gardens and have easy access to the countryside.’

Rotherhithe Primary School, London Rotherhithe Primary School, winner of a 2024 RIBA Regional Award, is an urban school where 42 languages are spoken and most pupils live in high rises. To bring this diverse school together, mealtimes take place in the flexible, double-height main hall, brightly lit by three tall windows, and the school has generous outside spaces. Throughout the school, unexpected intimate spaces have been carved out for small group learning, intervention and play, including seating areas under the stairs and windowsills with views. Architect Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios Client London Borough of Southwark Regeneration Division Structural and civil engineer Waterman Structures Contractor Farrans Principal designer/project manager AtkinsRéalis. Image Credit: HUFTON + CROW

Nowhere is the need to tailor educational building design to the pupils’ needs and aspirations more acute than in the design of Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) schools. Wayne Head, director of Curl la Tourelle Head Architecture, was behind the much-praised Alfreton Park School, in Derbyshire, winner of the Civic Trust Special Award for Education, ‘presented to an exemplar education building which inspires creativity, independence, and a love of learning’ and the RIBA East Midlands Building of the Year, putting it in under consideration for an RIBA National Award, which it went on to win. ‘We were very pleased to be shortlisted, not because of our egos but because we want to improve standards of school design for this user group – we’d like this level of design to be the standard,’ says Head. He feels fortunate that the local authority was so supportive: ‘The brief we were given from Derbyshire was inspirational and aspirational around the ethereal brief – they didn’t need to be convinced that this building was going beyond the essentials of the technical bulletin brief, and would have some fun and exciting aspects. They wanted architectural inventiveness, something more exciting and with friendly, social space. It was done on the normal budget; it just took a little bit of extra thought around areas of the specification.’ After pupils moved into the new school, headteacher, Josie O’Donnell, noted: ‘We have had a reduction in behaviour incidents, we see an improvement in communication from the pupils and generally… pupils are happier.’

Bellenden Primary School, Peckham Bellenden Primary School sits on a tight triangular site with housing on all sides. On a similar scale to the residential streets, the canary yellow polycarbonate cladding sets it apart. Ground floor corridors have been designed out, with the classrooms, assembly/ dining hall and external stairwells all accessed from covered areas in the playground. First floor terraces provide classrooms with dedicated outdoor learning spaces, while a larger terrace for quiet play is accessed by a stair from the central courtyard. The school is wrapped in a grey brick wall, punctuated with windows and portholes. Architect Cottrell & Vermeulen Client London Borough of Southwark Structural engineer Waterman Structures Main contractor Morgan Sindall. Image Credit: Anthony Coleman

Wayne Head has travelled extensively in Denmark and Sweden, and found inspiration in the very open school buildings there. ‘A looser plan with slip atria works very well all over Scandinavia. In the UK, some schools put the sports hall at the centre of the plan so pupils are always circulating around it, which sets up a strange energy and feels very enclosed. It’s important to design out the aggro in schools – you don’t want large groups of pupils colliding with one another on stairs or in corridors. I visited one school with lots of enclosed stairwells where they had to have a teacher on every staircase at break, which wasted a huge amount of staff time. At Alfreton Park we were trying to loosen the plan so it’s not a formal block with four wings. We made the entrance and arrival space like a little cottage so the children aren’t overwhelmed when they get there. We had a highly complex user group but we saw this as an opportunity – for example, the trampolining and music rooms are not hidden away at the back somewhere, they are at the centre of the plan.’

L’École de l’Étincelle, Quebec City, Canada L’École de l’Étincelle in Quebec City, Canada, is the result of an architectural competition to create an eco-friendly school, rooted in the local culture. The winning architectural approach aimed to deconstruct the conventional school, with its institutional buildings, and transform it into a friendly, accessible, and welcoming environment for children, with a domestic scale to encourage students to love school and to feel like they’re at home. Classrooms are placed in three cottages, linked with social areas, and there’s an inner courtyard for sport and outdoor learning, naturally sheltered against the prevailing winds. Architect APPAREIL Architecture/Agence Spatiale/BGLA Architecture Client Commission Scolaire des Rives du Saguenay Structural engineer Eckersley O’Callaghan Contractor AMEC Construction. Image Credit: Maxime Brouillet

Zane Putne, SEND director at Noviun Architects, which has delivered over 500 schools, including 50 SEND schools, adds: ‘It’s great when architects are allowed the creativity to problem-solve. Cohorts change a lot with SEND schools so designs need flexibility, but some needs don’t change, like strong wayfinding, nature, staff health and well-being, and the need to be calming, secure and welcoming. Every detail matters, surfaces need to be natural and tactile, and you need spaces where pupils can burn off energy. I don’t think that making all schools completely the same would be a good solution.’

Where architects have been allowed to not only meet with teachers, but work with children as well, the results can be exciting. Jan Kattein, director of Jan Kattein Architects, recently worked on a new library at Thornhill Primary School. ‘We wanted children’s imagination to guide the design process, so we asked each of them to make a scale model of their dream library. This collective effort resulted in nearly 400 shoebox-sized submissions which defined the design brief. Thornhill Primary School now has a new library, but it also has a generation of budding architects and a tightly knit community who are proud to be associated with the school.’ At Alfreton Park, Head arrived with large-scale models of the proposed new design that could be pulled apart like LEGO and reconfigured by pupils. ‘I’ve been creating schools for 20 years and I always make big models as it’s the best tool for the children and teachers to work with as plans are difficult to read.’

As well as the factors that are unique to every school and location, there is a common ground – whichever part of the world you work in. Michael Stebbins, associate principal at US-based CO Architects, notes: ‘Certain design principles can be universal. Providing students with options for individual or group learning, access to nature, and providing spaces for casual engagement and socialising can contribute to better educational outcomes – no matter the location. Designing spaces that inspire physical activity improves cognitive performance in the classroom. Providing windows with direct views to landscaped areas is a way to bring nature into classrooms and improve educational outcomes. Concepts from neuroarchitecture can also affect positive outcomes – for example, the appropriate use of colour can influence mood, engagement and productivity. On the other hand, campuses that present students with long expanses of tall security fencing, security screens at windows that restrict views, and seas of asphalt and concrete paving can negatively impact student mood and the ability to learn.’

‘I don’t think that architecture itself changes academic outcomes but it creates the right environment to achieve the best outcomes,’ adds Nick Hayhurst. ‘Our role is to make the right environment – one that enhances well-being and enables excellent teaching and learning to take place as easily as possible. If the environment isn’t right and the acoustics are rubbish, the room badly lit or arranged so that pupils can’t see the whiteboard well, then you aren’t creating the best environment for teachers to teach and children to learn.’

Considerable research over the past 50 years has shown how design interventions in schools can have a positive effect. A 1999 study by the Heschong Mahone Group found that students with the most daylight in their classrooms progressed 20% faster in maths and 26% faster in reading than students with gloomier classrooms, while those in rooms with large windows progressed 15% faster in maths and 23% faster in reading than those with smaller windows. A 2013 study of 30 schools in Blackpool for the HEAD (Holistic Evidence and Design) Project found that physical aspects of the school design, including light, temperature, air quality and the right level of stimulation could account for a 16% variation in pupils’ achievements, while a 2008 paper by Shield & Dockrell found that improving acoustics in the classroom achieved a 13% increase in test scores. There are more surprising findings as well – the HEAD Project also found that displaying children’s artwork around the school contributed to academic achievement as well as a sense of belonging.

The new Edith Neville Primary School replaced an earlier 1970s building that had low ceilings, poor acoustics, poor layout, narrow corridors and grey playground spaces. Hayhurst explains: ‘The new school has larger floor-to-ceiling heights, lots of daylight, views from the corridors and displays of work. Although poor behaviour had never been a problem there, the head teacher said she had sensed a palpable improvement in behaviour, with pupils seeming so much calmer. If the building promotes calmness it enables pupils to learn more effectively.’ He adds: ‘The quality of landscaped spaces and areas between classrooms make a massive difference in terms of well-being and how pupils value themselves. They go into a space that looks like people have thought about it rather than just a lump of tarmac – it feels like a special space and gives them a sense of being valued.’

Across the industry, architects are incorporating more nature into the school environment, from allotments and sheltered outdoor areas at Alfreton Park, to a jungle-like indoor courtyard at Office for Political Innovation’s Colegio Reggio in Madrid, and inner city schools with nature on the roof such as School 360 in Stratford, by Perkins & Will, with a rooftop playground, garden and games area. ‘Studies have conclusively shown that biophilia improves learning outcomes,’ says Stebbins. ‘For projects in temperate areas, we’re prioritising outdoor “classroom” environments, which can sometimes double as practice and performance spaces or simply provide outdoor spaces where students can socialise.’ At Alfreton Park, windowsills have been lowered so children can see the outside greenery, fragrant herbs and vegetables grow in the gardens, and the attenuation pond has become an outdoor wildlife feature.

‘It’s possible to see where the architecture of a school creates a tremendously positive impact,’ says Hayhurst, ‘but it’s more difficult to see the opposite, and pinpoint anything in the architecture itself to blame.’ Indeed, the school building at the centre of the Welsh protests had been shortlisted for a design award, was created by an experienced, multiaward- winning firm, and its layout, with a light-filled atrium and central dining hall, had been developed and approved in consultation with the local authority. The architect is keeping a dignified silence, but a few months after the strike, with no major changes to the building, but with a new head and assistant head, and additional support staff and youth workers in place, the local authority’s learning and culture scrutiny committee meeting was told ‘the atmosphere at the school was very calm’.

More input from staff and pupils, as was the norm in the days of BSF but seems to now be strongly discouraged by some local authorities, might help to avoid such difficult transitions into a new building. ‘Better, more relevant design solutions come from a strong stakeholder engagement beginning in the early stages of design,’ says Stebbins. ‘Architects are not sociologists, but we are good listeners.’ Richard Cottrell agrees: ‘Designing for the school and its users needs meeting, talking and understanding; working hand-in-hand to create the building they will walk into. I would like to see more listening to the teachers so we design a building that meets and understands their needs.’

The BSF days of unlimited budgets and total creative freedom have gone, but even within today’s restrictions, outstanding schools are still possible, says Wayne Head. ‘There’s a middle ground between BSF and just following the bulletin – design can have a rich impact for just a little bit more effort. It doesn’t always need more money, sometimes it just needs a little injection of architectural imagination, but not an overdose!’

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