Swanlea School

Swanlea School

AWW was appointed by Bouygues Ltd to refurbish and extend Swanlea Secondary School. The visual appearance of the new extension has been designed to respect the critically acclaimed original building design. Through demand curriculum analysis and extensive staff, pupil and stakeholder consultation, internal configurations and new build proposals were provided.

The school had been suffering from severe overheating and cooling issues due to its 1970s glass atrium. AWW addressed these design problems by providing a naturally ventilated solution to minimise overheating in the summer months, allowing the glazed atrium area to cool naturally. The new teaching block is set back from the street to avoid a visual clash with the existing and uses different external materials to contrast, rather than mimic, the original.

AWW’s focus on the key objectives ensured that the project achieved one of the highest scoring design quality assessment indicators and Andrew Norman of HLM Architects, the facilitator for the project, identified that “feedback from the governors, pupils and staff highlights that this projects is a success. In fact design quality assessments are rarely if ever this good.

“The school remained open throughout the £16million of expenditure and under the BSF programme and AWW was highly proactive to ensure that the planning and  construction work was complete in the shortest possible time in order to secure the diminishing government funding.”

Nicholas Mulholland