Visualisations of The City of Leicester College New Building

We have received some 3D visualisations of the current plans for The City of Leicester College from Miller Consortium (see the post “Latest Floor Plans – circulated for discussion”).

These begin to give a much clearer vision of the character of the proposed new build.

Vehicular Approach to the new building

Below are some more views – click on the thumbnails to get a better look of the current design for TCOLC!

Plaza Approach	Entrance	Foyer Section
Dining Terrace	Vehicular Approach	Interior Views
Overview	Ariel View

Latest Floor Plans – circulated for discussion

After some initial feedback from our staff, Miller have produced a first draft of the proposed new school building.

The decision was made to place the new school at the “Wyvern” end of the school plot.  This decision along with the need to build around existing structures has dictated the shape of the new build – a capital T with 3 additional wings placed diagonally from the “down stroke”, to catch the best of the sun.  The proposed structure has rooming arranged over 3 floors, although 1 floor is “lower ground” and is much smaller than the other 2.

I have attached the architect’s draft floor plans.  These plans will be discussed next week in faculty meetings, and comments fed back to Miller.

Staff this week have also been asked to complete a “pre-occupancy” survey, to gauge their opinion of our current situation.  If the rest of the staff respond anything like mine, there will be many “poor” and “inadequate” responses!   Our present buildings are crumbling away and present many obstacles to good teaching and learning.  The sooner we start building the better!

TCOLC SK001 Rev A Lower Ground Floor Plan

TCOLC SK002 Rev A Upper Ground Floor Plan

TCOLC SK003 Rev A First Floor Plan

Accommodation Schedule Finalised

The College has drafted what it hopes is its final Accommodation Schedule – the document that details exactly how many rooms in each part of the building and its size in square metres. The total footprint of the proposed build is 13,546 sq m.  From this document, the Architects can start designing the actual building.

From the schedule, it is easy to make out the most important design aspect of the new building – that the school will be arranged in paired faculty hubs around large independent work areas.

For instance, Mathematics will be paired with ICT and each will have a suite of rooms located around an independant work area totalling 200 sq metres (equivalent to about 4 standard classrooms). This pattern is repeated through the other hubs. Additionally there will be a staff work area, meeting room and office space in each hub to house Faculty heads, CLT and AchCos.

The faculty pairings for each hub are:

• Mathematics / ICT
• Science / Life Skills / Social Science
• Design & Technology / Business
• PE & Expressive Arts / Humanities
• English / Modern Foreign Languages / MEA

Compared to the original plans from 2005, it seems that the Central area about which the hubs were arranged has shrunk, and the space redistributed within the hubs – the Expressive Arts / Humanities and Design / Business hubs in particular swelling to about twice the size of the others hubs. Although I imagine these areas will be placed towards the centre of the building, allowing them to be zoned for day/night use.

The schedule details quite large classrooms compared to some of the phase 1 schools – with the majority at around 60 square metres each. This is significantly larger than the teaching spaces presently in Gill (around 54 sq metres) Wyvern (around 48 sq metres). There are some smaller classrooms though to cater for smaller groups, and some are planned to be partitioned to make larger teaching spaces as and when required.

The College was told it needed to include a space for a new sports hall in the plans, despite already having a sports hall. BSF rules and regs means that whilst there is no reason to think that the College could not continue to use the Sports Hall it shares with the community, there is no guarantee the agreement will last 25 years. As such, a Sports Hall sized shape will be included, which will be subdivided into a gym and dance studio.

The full Accommodation Schedule – February 2010 is attached here.

Beaumont Leys Scoop top BSF Prize

Beaumont Leys picked up two awards, including the top prize, at the Partnership for Schools annual national award ceremony earlier this month.

The Leicester City phase 1 school was awarded “BSF School of the Year” and also the special “Grand Prix” prize for the most transformational team.

Beaumont Leys wins top BSF prize

Head Teacher Liz Logie later commented:

“When we were working with the architect, I was clear that I wanted a building that was fabulous and gorgeous, inclusive and secure, open and flexible.

I think we succeeded. Building Schools for the Future has had a dramatic impact on everyone’s sense of well being and this is clear in students’ attitudes, behaviour and effort.

There is a real sense of pride, which is great to see”

Beaumont Leys - Interior view

An honourable mention for Soar Valley College, which  was nominated in the Most Inspirational Use of Outside Space category, and also to Leicester City Council – considered for the Innovation in PE and Sport prize.

How to Design a BSF School

For those wondering about the process of designing a new school under BSF, this video is well worth a watch.   It’s a slideshow with audio taken from a lecture at the University of Nottingham by Alan Dale, an Education Architect and independent consultant for a number of London Boroughs on BSF.

The first 5 minutes are  a bit dull, but it does get better! Try and stay with it beyond the first couple of slides!

In the video, Alan Dale explains how the BSF design process moves from initial vision, to a list of rooms and requirements, to considering adjacencies, before moving on to design ideas.  He takes a look at different plan forms and also discusses issues around circulation and flexible building design.

The lecture gives an interesting overview of the process  of designing a new school, and you can spot a number of the similar design elements in our own original design plans from 2005.

Learning Plaza – Could it work at TCOLC?

I was recently shown this video clip of the  “Learning Plaza”, at New Line Learning Academy, in Maidstone, Kent.  I thought was interesting and would like to share with you and ask if staff and students at our college would like to see something similar as part of our new build.

The Learning Plaza is designed to hold 90 students at any one time – equivalent to 3 standard classes.  There are enormous green tiered sofas at either end of the room which act as little amphitheatres.  Between these is an assortment of office-style work space and ICT facilities.   Teachers gather the students at one of the ends for group-work.   Students can choose to kick off their shoes and lounge around on the sofas, working on their tasks with notepad computers, or sit at more traditional desks.  You’ll have to watch the video to get the full idea!

Students respond favourably, saying its more relaxing and encourages them to behave – they dont want to get banned from using the space. The staff at the Academy are also very positive about the impact the learning plaza has made, and consider it a contributing factor in their improving results. So what do you think?  As a teacher, would you enjoy working in a space like this?  Could you share space with 2 other colleagues/classes or do you prefer having your own classroom?  Do you think students at TCOLC would respond well to working in this sort of environment? As a student, do you think you would learn better here or in a more traditional classroom? Vote in the poll, or post your comments below!

A Review of our original Plans (circa 2005)

The following plans were drawn up four years ago (when it looked like phase 2 might come along a bit sooner than it has!).  I thought I would post them up to show new staff (and remind old ones…) what point we had reached before things were shelved for a while.

The plans are now a little out of date.  The adjacencies were not finalised at the time, and indeed some of the faculties on the plans no longer even exist!

Pairing Faculties (2005)

What comes across clearly are the main ideas of paired faculty space arranged around a central hub of shared space and resources.  This  is still very  much the direction we are moving in.

The Adjacencies Plan (2005)

The next diagram is a full site plan.  The new buildings appear behind Wyvern, starting on top of the mobiles and stretching out onto the playing fields. The Gill building and most of Wyvern would be demolished and either laid to grass or used as car park space. One idea at the time was to keep our more recent buildings, ie Gill Science block, Sports Hall and Design block, as a way of getting more square footage for our money.  It was planned to use Gill Science as space for an outside agency to be brought onsite.

Original Site Plan (2005) - Full site

The following plan is a more detailed version of the new buildings, as envisage in 2005. The shared areas, like dining halls, library, theatre and administration appear in the central area.  Complementary faculties were to be paired and emerge like spokes from this central hub.

Site Plan 2005 - detailed view

These plans were more about concept, adjacencies and basic outline than actual detailed design, and were still fluid at the time.  However, we can  catch a glimpse of our new school, and identify many of its key aspects and features.