Feilden Fowles wins approval for £1.8m Wiltshire school addition

The £1.8 million Middle School Teaching and Learning Centre for the co-educational day and boarding school will be built into a sloping landscape within the grounds of the estate’s original 19th-century Bourton House.

The scheme, which also includes a learning resource space open to the whole school, is described as a ‘low-rise brick building comprising four distinct volumes linked by a central covered [clerestory-lit] street – a learning street’.

The emerging Lambeth-based practice was selected for the job following a competitive interview two years ago.

According to the firm, the ‘proposal is more than a set of traditional teaching spaces; the design strives to inspire children to discover the excitement of learning through both formal teaching and informal exploration.’

The main entrance, at the higher level, is clad in clay tiles with a ‘more playful language at lower level’ where brick piers and precast concrete lintels are topped by a laminated veneer lumber (LVL) engineered timber clerestory.

The practice says the stair leading to the central learning street was ‘inspired by the stair at Copenhagen’s Hellerup School by Arkitema, and the Apollo School in Amsterdam by Herman Hertzberger’.

Pinewood’s headteacher Philip Hoyland said: ‘Feilden Fowles immediately grasped the fact that we were looking for something more than just a classroom block. We wanted an environment that would stimulate and inspire our children, that would allow for the space to integrate technology into our teaching and that would serve as a base for our Middle School and Learning Skills department.

‘Above all we wanted a building that blended the prevailing architectural styles surrounding it, so it sits at ease within the Pinewood estate.’

The project is due to start on site next month. 

Project data

Address Bourton, Shrivenham SN6 8HZ
Client name Pinewood School
Architect Feilden Fowles
Project team Edmund Fowles, Ingrid Petit, Ariane Leiberherr
Project architect Ingrid Petit
Structural engineer Cameron Bailey, (Structure Workshop)
Services engineer Tilly Lenartowicz (Ritchie + Daffin)
Quantity surveyor Michael Moss, (Gardiner and Theobald)
Building contractor To be confirmed
Landscape architect Sara Sall
Existing gross internal area 650m²
Proposed internal area 185m²
Construction value To be confirmed
Schedule Invited competition 2016; appointment January 2017; estimated completion September 2019