100% new build formed from the federation of Warwick Boys and Aveling Park schools

o       

          This new school has been designed to provide a rich, stimulating and functional environment which will support transformational learning. The emphasis has been put on the engineering specialize and making sure the school will be used as a learning tool, both internally and externally. This is achieved through the use of a variety of materials and textures in the design.

Design Philosophy

The new Bremer School will open with huge ambitions - to make every child matter and be given every chance to develop his or her unique potential; to provide a matchless learning and teaching environment assisted by advanced information and communication technology (ICT); and at the same time to attract and retain the commitment and affection of a hugely diverse school and wider community that speaks over fifty languages, practises every major world religion and none, and is keen to ensure a lifetime of opportunities. Design can only play a part in this effort, but it is a vital part. The most important resource is people and the first role of design is to assist them. This will be achieved through making the school layout and environment work well functionally and to ensure that the architecture helps create a sense of belonging and respect. Through a series of intense and extremely valuable stakeholder consultations we have gone quite a long way in the design to achieve these aims by thoroughly understanding and designing for the schools needs, and by anticipating and catering for future change. But there is considerably more potential, particularly in developing surface treatments and detail to create cultural significance.

We set out in further detail below some of the more functional aspects of the design but pause here to touch on some of the less tangible aspects. There are many aspects of culture and history that can nourish the architecture:

The school leadership has already identified the relevance of the Hawker Siddeley site for engineering specialize. Some redundant industrial fittings have been salvaged for potential incorporation/exhibition in connection with the new school. We propose that there is a trail of such objects as outdoor sculptures from Fulbourne Road signalling the entrance and leading you into the school.

The head teachers have also talked about prominently displaying in the entrance hall the word ‘welcome’ in all the school’s languages. The proposed design provides just the place for this: the flanking wall of the three storey high central street. The whole of this wall on all levels could be ‘decorated’ with ‘welcome’ in over 300 languages and dozens of scripts where relevant with a transliteration in Roman script. There could be other forms of display too.

In developing the design for the Bremer School our aim is to meet the school specific requirements as described in the ITN, and provide a variety of high quality, stimulating spaces to enable learning in the 21^st Century.

Every area of a school can provide an opportunity for learning and we agree with the head teachers’ view that, “every space should be a learning space”. In our scheme this starts with the approach to the school, along which we are proposing sculptural ‘learning bollards’ and continues into the school building where ‘welcome’ is illustrated in different languages of the world and on out to the playground where the site’s industrial heritage is remembered in the materials and construction of the meridian garden. Inside the school the street unites the different parts of the building and can be used for exhibition, display and dining as well as informal study, meeting or resource areas. Our philosophy is that these ‘spaces in between’ can be designed as more than just circulation. They should be places of encounter and learning and are essential in creating a welcoming and stimulating environment where students want to go to learn.

We have designed an inclusive school which provides a centre of excellence in technology and engineering for the benefit of all of the students and the community in the Walthamstow area.  The clear references to the engineering history of the site and the clear celebration of students’ technology achievements aligned to the rich mixture of cultures will provide an inspiring environment to raise the aspirations of students and the community alike.

Our design for the new school also recognises that it will be maximising the life chances of learners through the adoption and gradual evolution of pedagogy backed up by a robust and future proofed ICT infrastructure that converges all functions around a single IP network. Such a design allows for the school to both operate initially as a high quality learning environment incorporating best practice in raising educational standards and as students and staff gain experience of personalising learning within the context of an ICT rich environment, the building design can easily be modified to configurations that support the current international best practice in independent learning, inquiry based learning or problem based learning.