St Paul's Way Trust School

The siting and orientation of this building is key to its success not only as a community school but also as a low energy building.

The school sits proudly on the street with no fences screening it off from the public. The ground floor of the building, street side, offers a range of public functions including a business centre, sports facilities and a theatre. The building section helps overcome the issues with public and secure private spaces for the school by mainly raising all the school teaching functions to the first floor. The building is divided into 6 distinct parts giving it its striking image on the street. The houses all incorporate a top lit atrium to bring light to all the circulation area and the central functions which give each house its character. The subjects in the school are arranged in themes within each house. The houses contain 7 or 8 different types of teaching spaces from traditional classrooms through to open spaces within which a number of different teaching styles can be used. With a Faraday Science Centre, one of the first in the country, their science specialism is flourishing.

The orientation of the building meant that we could naturally ventilate all the north facing classrooms. To the south and the road, we needed to service these spaces with mechanical ventilation for both acoustics and large internal heat loads such as IT. The building has exposed concrete ceilings and night purging of heat to maintain a more even temperature throughout the day. The atriums play a significant part in the air movement of the building to create bright, well ventilated learning spaces. This building reduced its carbon use by 60% compared to a typical school and it has BREEAM Excellent accreditation. As a result of this new building the behaviour of the children has improved greatly and the results over the past two years have improved by around 60%.