| Monkseaton School team win award |
By: Karli Edmondson
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Posted: Tuesday, January 4, 2011 2:23 pm
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The delivery team responsible for the ground-breaking Monkseaton High School in North Tyneside which opened to pupils in summer 2009 ended last year on a high note following award of the 2010 National Constructing Excellence ‘Value’ Award, one of the most prestigious national awards for the built environment.
The exemplar school, which has nearly 1000 pupils aged between 13 and 19, is already setting high standards for educational facilities of the future and has secured multiple accolades for the quality and innovation displayed by its striking design.
With its unusual triangular classrooms and open learning areas orientated for maximum natural ventilation and daylight, it is effectively an ‘educational community’ under a vast protective shell allowing movement between areas, and even use of the sports pitch, in all weathers.
Earlier in the year, the school was awarded ‘Educational Facility of the Year’ in the Building Excellence Awards by the UK Local Authority Building Control body. It was also highly commended in the Engineering Excellence Awards 2010 by the Association of Consulting Engineers and was singled out in the regional Constructing Excellence Awards for both the ‘Value’ award and the ‘Project of the Year’ awards.
To develop the award winning design, Devereux Architects and its engineering partner Parsons Brinckerhoff, worked closely with the existing school management team to ultimately deliver a sustainable, welcoming and inspirational setting for learning.
Ian Lancastle-Smith, Director of Devereux Architects and designer of the school, said: “Throughout this project, we had the students and teachers’ best interests at heart and we wanted to deliver an environment that would improve the conditions for effective teaching and learning. We believe that good design doesn’t have to cost the earth and we’ve delivered a cost-effective solution that is innovative and visionary.”
Turning the design into a structural reality required complex modelling by Parsons Brinckerhoff. The company was also responsible for the internal ‘environment’ through its choice of sustainable design solutions for the acoustics, lighting and heating of the state-of-the-art structure.
Grahame Kelly, Northern Region Director of Building Design for Parsons Brinckerhoff noted: “To start with such a visionary design concept from Devereux Architects was truly inspiring for the whole project team. Using cutting edge technology developed across all disciplines, the team created a new evolution of exemplar school building. Not only does the building work operationally and functionally for the teachers and pupils, but through the use of state of the art technologically and innovative structural and architectural design it achieved a cost reduction of around 20 per cent.”
A key feature was the careful use of natural materials and the amount and quality of natural daylight which reaches deep into the plan of the building. Communal areas such as libraries, independent learning areas, entrances and meeting areas are open plan, flexible and readily adaptable for future requirements, including classroom walls that can be moved to change and create new spaces.
The provision of independent learning facilities is an essential requirement of the school. Students are encouraged to be self-reliant and self-disciplined and the school recognises the many different learning styles that their students have. The school’s built environment is designed to promote the ‘joy of learning’ by creating spaces which encourage self study and contemplation.
Additionally, there are alternative outdoor learning facilities in a secure environment and generous open social spaces. |
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