8 May 2012
End users should always have an integral, vital role
to play in the design process right from the project’s inception
says Capita Symonds’ Richard
Woods...
There is an understandable momentum within the
education design community to simplify the process of building
schools. This is exemplified by last year’s James Review, with the
suggestion that (ideally standardised) design is best left in the
hands of construction industry professionals.
The ambition here is laudable: efficiency, and
protecting the design of schools from the vagaries of being
excessively bespoke. Nevertheless, we should as an industry ensure
that end users are not drawn into the process late on, simply to
choose interior finishes and colours. End users – in fact all
stakeholders – should always have an integral, vital role to play
in the design process right from the project’s inception.
We’ve recently designed SWB Academy in
Wolverhampton (pictured above) which is due to open for
students in September. The site is tight, has complex levels, and -
not untypically for the Black Country – is peppered with shallow
and deep mine workings. Our four storey compact-footprint design
approach, with cellular teaching spaces on all four sides wrapping
around larger open-plan volumes in the building’s interior, is an
efficient response to the constraints of the site. The academy is
located within an economically deprived part of the city, and the
design has developed to help foster the school’s radical and
evidently successful teaching approach which focuses on the
provision of large ‘skills zones’.
A key moment in our consultations saw the
client challenge our positioning of these skills zones from the
perspective of a detailed interrogation of how the spaces would
perform in differing teaching scenarios. The resulting design
adjustment was felt by all parties to mark a real improvement which
shows that consultation can still have a vital role to play in the
design process…
Richard Woods is a Senior
Associate Director in Capita Symonds’ Design Division. He will be
speaking at this year’s BFE at 11.15am on Wednesday 9th May in the
main conference hall in ‘Seminar Stream 1: PSBP
special’.