joinedupdesignsforschools
joinedupdesignsforschools
The Sorrell Foundation has created an enormously successful educational programme called joinedupdesignforschools. We were in the pilot group of architects and designers that included Paul Smith and Thomas Heatherwick. The programme inverted the normal design procurement process. Pupils, who are not normally participants in the design of their schools, became the clients of an established architect or designer. We worked with children from Monkseaton Community High School near Whitley Bay in the north east of England.
With close to a thousand pupils, the school dates from the 1970's, with a series of rectilinear classroom blocks arranged around a roofed-over courtyard. The large campus had a depressing air, with featureless buildings finished in exposed concrete blockwork. The classrooms were small, poorly lit and overheated. In their impressively succinct briefing, it was not a surprise that the small group of sixth formers asked for curvaceous, spacious, colourful, generous forms.
They longed for natural light, open spaces with fewer corridors, secure storage areas for school bags, and functional, adjustable furniture. They wanted their school to be a place of optimism and potential. An inexpensive solution was proposed, compared to the long-delayed published plans for the school, inserting a number of colourful teaching pods with distinctive shapes made from industrial cladding on timber frames.
With close to a thousand pupils, the school dates from the 1970's, with a series of rectilinear classroom blocks arranged around a roofed-over courtyard. The large campus had a depressing air, with featureless buildings finished in exposed concrete blockwork. The classrooms were small, poorly lit and overheated. In their impressively succinct briefing, it was not a surprise that the small group of sixth formers asked for curvaceous, spacious, colourful, generous forms.
They longed for natural light, open spaces with fewer corridors, secure storage areas for school bags, and functional, adjustable furniture. They wanted their school to be a place of optimism and potential. An inexpensive solution was proposed, compared to the long-delayed published plans for the school, inserting a number of colourful teaching pods with distinctive shapes made from industrial cladding on timber frames.
The existing classrooms acted as anterooms to the new additions, which were top-lit from skylights and gave views across the surrounding playing fields. A happy consequence of the project was the effect it had on the lives of the small group of pupils who presented the design ideas to the school and hopefully, by example, on to their contemporaries. They were featured on the Channel 4 television series '4Learning', and were subsequently invited to 11 Downing Street to explain the proposals they had commissioned to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and key decision makers in the schools design programme.
press:
The Sorrel Foundation February 2005; Observer February 2005; Building Design February 2005; Building Design February 2005; Independent November 2003; TES January 2002;
press:
The Sorrel Foundation February 2005; Observer February 2005; Building Design February 2005; Building Design February 2005; Independent November 2003; TES January 2002;