The transformation of Burntwood School combines a 1950s modernist education campus for 2000 students and 200 staff in South West London. Within an existing, mature landscape, six new buildings develop the legacy of the existing as pavilions and stage a system of bespoke structural components to combine efficiency and joy.
The new buildings – four four-storey teaching pavilions, a new sports hall and a new performing arts building – are nestled between a number of surviving buildings (including two by Sir Leslie Martin) and form a complete and contiguous campus with lawns, squares and a central pedestrian area. Within each pavilion, classrooms and ancillary rooms are arranged along a central corridor with voids and double heights at each end to increase natural daylight and create connections to the outside.
The regularity of each plan is traced up to the height with faceted precast concrete elements equivalent to a 7.50-metre-high construction and teaching module; a development of the prefabricated façade work at the Dagenham Park Church of England School.
[*Source: Allford Hall Monaghan Morris for archdaily] (https://www.archdaily.com/771424/burntwood-school-allford-hall-monaghan-morris)
Photos: Timothy Soar, Rob Parrish
