Boys’ School Project wins Civic Trust Award 2024
When we approached the Boys’ School redevelopment and refurbishment project, our central strategic aim was to put the students’ experience at the heart of the design.
For the Foundation, funding the project represented a significant proportion of our expenditure which we were able to meet from the capital from our Central Schools Foundation endowment over the course of the ten-year building programme.
However, supporting this project has always been about much more than the fundamental act of providing the funds to realise the dream.
The board of trustees and the Foundation executive team were clear that they wanted to keep the vision of an enriching education at the heart of the building programme. We were delighted that architects Hawkins Brown, who won a competitive tender, brilliantly brought this project to life.
Over the last 150 years, seven buildings (including the Grade II listed former county court and the Tabernacle Chapel) had served as one school campus around a central courtyard. The result was a hotch-potch of spaces, increasingly under-utilised and lacking in inspiration. The concrete courtyard, where the students spent break time had the gallows humour nickname of ‘prison yard’.
The revitalised design, which was completed in September 2023, is nothing short of a transformation.
The architects replaced the less suitable buildings with contemporary teaching facilities, entirely fit for purpose, and improved the efficiency of the remaining buildings through targeted and sensitive refurbishment.
The school now has a new science laboratory, a partially subterranean sports hall in the courtyard. The Creative Arts Centre in the Tabernacle Chapel, celebrates the building's history through the retention of original features while becoming a state of the art space which befits the school’s excellent music achievements and ambitions.
The breaktime experience has been uplifted. Seeing students enjoy a genuinely restorative setting with planting, multi level seating, and enough space for all to relax freely is joyful for school staff and the Foundation alike.
We're thrilled that the designs have won the Civic Trust Award 2024 award but the true prize for the Foundation is knowing that we’ve facilitated excellence and created a bigger and better school for our students and the generations to come.