BIRMINGHAM SCHOOLS FRAMEWORK BY HAWORTH TOMPKINS

“Park View School is a collage of buildings dating from the 60s, with various extensions added over the years. Many of the buildings were in poor condition and suffered from dangerous overcrowding in the corridors.

Haworth Tompkins were selected to provide a site wide masterplan for the school to create an environment that matched the school's academic achievements. 

A new circulation spine has been inserted into the heart of the school's campus, leading from the entrance through to a central courtyard, connecting the many disparate elements.

This previously unused courtyard has been transformed by the larch clad covered walkways to create a sheltered collegiate atmosphere, a shared amenity that can be used to meet, reflect, study and dine.

Internally, the narrow corridors have been broken up to enable the circulation areas to expand, creating breakout areas to reduce congestion, increase passive supervision and allowing daylight into the space. All classrooms have been re-configured to aid modern teaching techniques with new services coordinated throughout. 

New extensions have been constructed to complete the assembly. The timber lined sports hall provides opportunities to participate in a variety of sports and naturally lit from a translucent band of clerestory polycarbonate.” Description from architects. 

Graham Haworth, Director at Haworth Tompkins said:

“Park View School was in many ways typical of schools in the UK and shared many common problems. This project demonstrates that by working with the existing building stock, ‘de-silting’ it, introducing creative additions, and making simple but thoughtful improvements to the whole, a first class learning environment can be created to reflect the academic excellence this school has achieved.”

 

 

Location: Birmingham, England

Architects: Haworth Tompkins

Landscape: Fira

Structural Engineer: Nolan Associates

Area: 6,000 sqm

Year: 2012

Photographs: Ioana Marinescu, Richard Haughton

EXTENSION TO THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF ART BY VAN MOURIK

“In the late 1990s architecten van Mourik designed the new housing for the ‘Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten’ (KABK, Royal Academy of Fine Arts) in The Hague city centre.

Two national listed buildings were renovated, extended and merged to form one single location. In 2010, architecten van Mourik were commissioned to design a new plan for extension.

The design of the rooftop construction on top of one of the national monuments was the first step. The rooftop construction is an entirely transparent volume, which is made up of steel and glass.

The storey-high windows offer a view of the ministries, The Hague historical centre and the art academy’s courtyard.

The use of smart installation-engineering and moveable walls renders the interior flexible in terms of usage for various functions (education, exhibitions of students’ work, office spaces).

Furthermore, the construction is designed to be light and reversible, which means the rooftop construction could be dismantled in future without it affecting the national monument.” Description of Van Mourik.

Location: Den Haag, Holland

Architect: Van Mourik

Project Team: Piet Grouls, Klaas van der Molen, Martijn van den Ban, Romke de Haan, Pascal Tetteroo, Max van Steen

Floor Area: 1.000 m2

Client: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK)

Year: 2010 – 2012

ÉCOLE CENTRALE ENGINEERING SCHOOL BY OMA

OMA has won the competition for the new École Centrale engineering school and its surrounding urban development in the research and innovation zone of Saclay, southwest of Paris.

With the concept of a "lab city," OMA was selected from four competing international architectural practices. The project is led by Clément Blanchet, director of OMA projects in France.

In contrast to the corridor / room linearity of the typical laboratory, OMA's design is a low level, glass-roofed superblock containing an open plan grid inside, where various activities can interact and be overlooked simultaneously.

The grid offers the freedom to generate a new typology for learning, cultivating collaboration while maintaining the stable conditions of the engineering school's primary pedagogical function.

Blanchet commented: "The design integrates urbanism with the school, supplanting the homogeneous experience of the campus. It's an attempt to define the actual esthetic of science."

A diagonal main street slices through the grid, connecting with a future metro station for Paris at one end, and the existing engineering school, Supelec, at the other. In the centre of the project, a forum rises above the grid, offering a focal point of activity for the school.

This platform accommodates a gym, administration center and classrooms for first year students, winding its way up through and above the field. This stack is conceived as a training machine offering a complementary condition to the small, intricate spaces in the horizontal field of "lab city."

The project was developed in collaboration with Bollinger and Grohman, Alto, DHV, DAL, and D'Ici Là.

LYCÉE GEORGES FRÊCHE BY FUKSAS

“The building is intended for hotel, gastronomic and tourism-related disciplines. Situated on an area of 1,6 hectares, the structure consists of: Two buildings for the school (for 1000 students) connected by 5 footbridges crossing the central courtyard with trees; a residence for students (78 beds); a managerial residence (10 apartments); a gym; an outer athletics track and a sports ground.

The school includes a 12-room hotel (ten of 2 and 3 stars; two 4-star suites); three public restaurants – a gastronomic restaurant (147 sq.m./for 50), a brasserie (110 sq. m.) and a pedagogic restaurant (213 sq. m.); a multipurpose room.

The project appears as a single entity that shows a formal diversity, compact volumes with sculptural shapes.

The volumetric complexity can be seen even inside the buildings, giving to every room its spatial particularity.

The building that houses the school is characterized by the presence of two cavities that provide, on one side, the entrance to students and visitors, on the other side, a secondary entrance for teachers.

The school is made of two main buildings, that constitute the sculptural mass, where the gym, the residence for students and the managerial residence gravitate.

In the first one, that extends towards Rue Titien, there are: the multipurpose room, the administrative offices, the classrooms and the cafeteria that opens towards the recreational areas outside.

In the second one, there are the student activities: the cafeteria linked to the inner courtyard, the spaces used for the gastronomic and hotel sector and, on the upper floors, the Documentation and Information Centre.

The gastronomic restaurant, the brasserie, and the 4-star hotel, that provide the showcase for the savoir faire of the school, represent the strength points of the project.

From a thermic point of view, the choice to put a curved concrete hull assures an efficient thermic inertia.

The outer fae overlaps this hull, going well with the curves of the volumes; made of triangular varnished  anodized aluminium boxes and frames of the same shape, the fae shows the play of full and empty spaces, of lights and shadows, that are peculiar of the dynamics of the project.” Description of Architects.

Location: Montpellier, France

Architect:Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas

Consultants:ALTIA – Acoustics; NEVEUX-ROUYER – Landscape Architects; ALMA Consulting - Kitchen design.

Engineering:IOSIS

Artistic Interventions:Matali Crasset

Area: 23.60000 mq

Date: 2006-2012

Client: Region Languedoc-Roussillon