Multi-use Education Centre
Date 2021
Location Beverley
Value Undisclosed
Quantity Surveyor: Thornton Firkin
Structural Engineer: Alan Wood & Partners
Mechanical & Electrical: Viridis
The new teaching facility forms the first phase of a redevelopment plan for a large brownfield site at the heart of Bishop Burton College, Beverley campus. The site is adjacent to a converted stable block and historic walled garden with decorative greenhouses. Buildings within the immediate vicinity are low and linear in form with white painted brick or render with slate roofs. Within the wider context, the agricultural buildings are typically larger and clad with sheet materials and timber.
The project has been designed to meet the essential teaching space requirements resulting from the demographic increase in the number of post-16 students. The new facility will provide multi-purpose spaces to accommodate students from a wide range of curriculum areas, with a range of classrooms and ancillary accommodation.
The design has been informed by the neighbouring buildings on campus, both in terms of form and materiality. The site is surrounded by the more historical buildings on the campus, buildings that are remnants of the original estate. It was therefore important for the design to sympathetic to these, whilst responding to the scale and detail of the larger agricultural buildings across the wider site, to create a sense of uniformity within the campus.
The building is designed to meet the sustainability standards of BREEAM “Excellent”. A passive environmental strategy that incorporates green technologies has been implemented to create a development that has a lower embodied carbon and minimal operational energy demand.
The detail at the top of the pitched roof creates a relationship with the roofs and chimneys of the adjacent student services buildings. A band of glazing at high level sits above a solid masonry base to the full perimeter of the building, referencing the glasshouse structures that project above the adjacent brick walls of the walled garden. This upper band of glazing has been lined with brise soleil, providing solar shading whilst referencing the rhythm of the glasshouses. The ground storey of white masonry takes reference from the existing white painted façades and provides a more tactile and durable finish. New deciduous trees are planted in the courtyard to supply further solar shading to the generous openings serving the ground floor classrooms on the south-west facade.
