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Secondary School in Liverpool

Part 1 Project 2008
Chris Allen
 University of Liverpool | UK
Current debates about education in the UK cater little for 'home schooling', yet this is a fast growing tendency in the country. This project explores a contradiction rich in opportunities for architectural innovation: a school for home-educated children.

Located on a park in Everton, this 'educational machine' supports parents and students in the delivery of home education and complements the public space. As a school it provides room for the continued production of briefs and the assessment of students' work. As a public facility, it contains an E-library situated along the promenade both enabling 24-hour use while activating the park.

In an attempt to subvert the traditional image of school buildings, this project uses steel in order to create a light structure that hovers over the park. Considering that the programme has been redefined in order to satisfy the exigencies of distance learning (for home schooling), an arrangement of similar sized modules are distributed along an ordering grid. Each module houses a different activity that is reflected in its form. Yet, the modules are flexible in order to permit adaptation to new systems and future agendas.

The columns that support the elevated building create an intermediate space between the existing park and the school. In order to balance the horizontality of the pier-like building, a vertical element containing the lifts and stairs punctures violently the ground connecting the data storage units with the educational modules that float above. Archive storage and computer systems are kept below ground level where environmental conditions are constant.

Together all the components of the school act as points of reference to form a landscape that locks the building into the site.

Chris Allen

Would a school remain a school without students attending classes? What would it take for parents to trust the UK education system again? Can methods of distance learning used by universities be employed at primary and secondary levels?

This project challenges all pre-conceptions about school buildings and home schooling, i.e. that schools need classrooms or that home schooling precludes children’s social development. In fact, the project advances a subtle critique to current debates about education and school buildings. It is an intelligent interpretation of current socio-political issues translated into the design of an elegant structure that fulfils numerous functions: it activates a park currently uninhabited, it connects visually the periphery of the city with the centre, it introduces a library to a deprived neighbourhood and it provides support for home-educated children.

The project was divided in three stages. An installation was produced during the first stage in order to explore issues regarding the role of advanced computer technologies in developing methods of distant learning. The commodification of education in the UK was also explored in this stage. Ideas arising from this preliminary exercise were further explored in the second stage through a series of speculative drawings which led to the final stage. At this point architecture appeared as a utilitarian discourse that needed to be subverted. The final proposal is, therefore, not the result of a given programme -which was considered inadequate- but of problematizing the relationship between architecture and education in the current socio-political condition.

2008
Introduction: This project through research and spatial exploration proposes a contradiction rich in opportunities for architectural innovation: a school for home-educated children located in Everton.
Initial experimentation: Physical 3D modelling allowed for the exploration of forms within a defined grid of (7.5x7.5x3.5). The final artefact is controlled remotely using a radio frequency remote. (Shown fully working top-right)
Rendering: A cut away render of final school showing the relationship between the school/park/and void.
Contextual plan with building in landscape and context: The building plan shows the roof promenade extend over the park.
Landscaping of the site is designed to compliment the plinth of the school. Plateaus extend out from the schools plinth to create flat areas of mixed pavement and grass for ball games which gradually blend into the undulating grass landscape.
Ground floor plan: Public level, housing main entrance and library spaces.
South Elevation and initial sketch experimenting with the relationship between forms and grid.
Plan showing private tutor and staff offices towards the west end of the building and the student assessment hall for examinations to the east.
North Elevation: The building; although situated in-land, takes full advantage of its location above Liverpool, allowing for elevated vistas that play on the drama and excitement between park, building and surrounding context.
Plan showing the private technician’s level: The parasitic pods of the maintenance deck inhabit the underside of the school cradled in a secondary hanging structure. This floor is inhabited by the maintenance staff who work in 24 hour shift patterns.
Longitudinal section AA: Floor relationships can be easily seen with the floors gradually descending from the top public promenade over the building to the hidden secure archive rooms below.
Typical plan for submerged module: Archive storage and computer systems are kept below ground level where environmental conditions are constant.
Cutaway section through the park exposing data storage and archive rooms.
Section BB and typical detail of the main steel frame and internal modules.
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