In April 2015, I began work with PR Associates on the design of a new £1.4 million Sixth Form Centre at Hanley Castle High School in Worcestershire.
The new sixth form centre, made possible with a £1.2 million grant from the ‘Condition Improvement Fund’, part of the Government’s Education Funding Agency, accommodates the school’s sixth form facilities, which include spacious classrooms, a large common room, a fully-equipped library, independent study rooms and a state of the art IT hub.
The scope of the project included the removal of an existing mobile classroom to build a new state-of-the-art Sixth Form centre for the school. Construction of the project, which began in October 2015 took just under 12 months to complete and officially opened in September 2016.
The building is accessed through a centrally-located entrance to a central foyer/ stairway area, from which the visitor can directly access the classroom, meeting room, IT hub and WC areas, as well as the first floor area.
The main staircase brings the visitor directly to the first floor landing space above from which the common room and study areas, as well as staff areas are located.
The entire first floor level is comfortably accommodated beneath a complex, steeply-sloping, hipped roof space, the lowest point of which maintains a clear headroom of 2.1m throughout.
At the focal point of the centre, the large, upstairs, open plan common room provides a place for students to relax and study in a bright, modern environment. A large glazed curtain wall looking out onto the school fields bathes the space in generous amounts of daylight, even on overcast days.
Connected to the common room area, a first floor balcony provides additional circulation to the ground floor via two external staircases. The open air balcony also provides a space for sixth form students to take a breath of fresh air, and support their peers at sports events held on the sports pitches below.
I was approached by PR Associates to produce a full tender and construction package following planning approval for the build, which included a complete set of floor plans, elevations, sections and details to give an accurate description of the design ready for construction.
In addition to the drawing package, I was commissioned to produce a number of visuals for a proposed Sixth Form for the purpose of communicating the proposed design to the client.
The visuals, created using existing photographs of the school, are intended to give an impression of how the project will sit in the context of the existing site and surrounding buildings. Following the production an accurate 3D computer model of the extension using the proposed CAD drawings, the challenge was to try to imitate proposed material textures and demonstrate how they would look in the final build.
Taking a photograph of the school buildings across the school fields, and mapping the location of the proposed build from the CAD drawings, I was able to superimpose an image of the 3D model on the 2D photograph to create a visual of the new sixth form centre in context.
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