BREEAM Workshop

Jones King, our M&E consultant for this project carried out an initial BREEAM Workshop which was attended by the whole Project Team.

BREEAM (BRE Environmental Assessment Method) is the leading and most widely used environmental assessment method for buildings. It sets the standard for best practice in sustainable design and has become the de facto measure used to describe a building's environmental performance. 

This initial workshop allowed us to understand how best to achieve a building with genuine sustainability credentials right from the outset, before we have even put pen to paper on a design for the school!

At the moment we are on target for achieving a high end 'Very Good' rating for the school.

Community Drop in Sessions

Last week we held a series of 'Drop in Sessions' which were an opportunity for the wider community and all interested parties to come down to site and meet us in the shiny new Site Office, look at the work we have done so far and see the early conceptual designs for the new School.

We had a fabulous turnout and over 100 people came to see us for a chat and to ask questions and leave feedback regarding the different options that we had come up with for how the School design might come together.

Here are the 5 options we displayed at the sessions....

We have agreed the Brief!

Following our Project Team Meeting on Friday 14th May we have agreed and 'signed off' our Brief for the school before we start to work up our initial concept designs.

The Brief has been developed following the first 'Briefmaking' Workshop where we agreed an initial headline brief for the new School. We have then challenged and developed this as we have carried out the School Visits, BREEAM Workshop, Whole Life Value Workshop, Stakeholder Workshop and Pupil Workshops.

We have prioritised the brief into three categories, 'Primary Design Drivers' that form the essential ethos for the design of the school and that are seen as 'Project Critical', 'Secondary Design Drivers' that are all important and integral to the design of the new school and finally 'Nice to haves' which we all would like to see included within the final scheme, but that may need to be reconsidered depending on budget and spatial issues.

Aled and I are both excited now, as we are entering the early conceptual design stage where we can start to put pen to paper and come up with some initial thoughts and ideas as to how the school might look, work and feel!

Student Workshop - Design Day!

On the 18th May we held a Design Day at Robinswood Primary School. Pupils from Robinswood,  Hillview and Dinglewell Primary School joined us as we spent the day designing our 'Dream' Primary School.

We discussed how you know a building is a school, what makes a good school both inside and out, what they liked and disliked about their schools and then prioritised these into a list of 'Big Ideas' to help us design our 'Dream' school.

We then split into two teams and developed ideas and mood boards before coming up with our final designs using Sketchup, collage, drawing and montage to convey our ideas.

At the end of the day, the two teams presented their schemes to Martin (the Head of Robinswood) and Ash from Carter Construction.

The pupils from all of the Schools were superb and came up with some really fantastic ideas, some of which challenged our thinking on the early concept designs for Coopers Edge...it was also great to see them present their schemes at the end of the day and debate/defend their ideas with a real sense of ownership over their designs!

Visits

We have visited a number of other schools whilst developing the brief for the new School. 


On Tuesday 27th April we spent the day visiting two Schools that had recently been completed and had a community focus. Staffordshire County Council kindly organised these visits and were on hand to explain the history behind the design and development of the Schools.


We saw lots of things at both schools that we liked and disliked and certainly found the day worthwhile.


A number of important themes came out of the visits namely;

- The opportunity of using the Small Hall to provide a Dance Studio/

Multimedia Space that could also be available to the wider Community

- Covered 'Inside-Outside' Space that could provide a wide range of uses for both the school and the wider community

- Grouping the Specialist Teaching areas into 'Heart-spaces' that allow for improved informal and distance learning

- Potential for covered 'Outside Classroom' spaces

- The benefits of considering the landscape and outside learning areas so that they can support the teaching and learning rather than being an 'afterthought'

The Schools that we visited were:

Redhill Primary School, Worcester

Littleton Green Community School, Staffordshire

Redbrook Hayes Primary School, Staffordshire