new christ church primary school, reading
pupils in new christ church primary school's specialist base needed their own washrooms and a safe outdoor space, and reading borough council needed it done quickly. we won the commission with a competitive bid and delivered a design that solved several problems at once, to a tight timetable set by the school year.
the school's additional resource provision (a specialist base for pupils with special educational needs, within a mainstream school) now has new washrooms and an enclosed playground on a raised deck. its pupils have a calmer space of their own, built over the summer holidays with minimal disruption to the school.
one good idea can solve three problems.
the best solutions often come from looking at a site's constraints together rather than one at a time. here, protected trees and a redundant concrete slab could have meant cost and delay. a single design move turned both into non-issues.
03
delivered to the school year
with the programme fixed by the summer holidays, we turned queries round quickly and kept decisions moving, so the new spaces were ready for the pupils when they returned.
02
designed with the school
colours, heights, partitions and washroom layouts were all agreed with the school's staff. where the drainage didn't connect as expected, we worked with the engineers on a reliable pumped solution with a standby pump.
01
a deck like a table top
nearby trees protected by tree preservation orders ruled out concrete foundations, and an old concrete slab on the site was unfit for use and costly to remove. we designed a deck on screw piles (steel piles wound into the ground with no digging) that sits over the slab like a table top, protecting the tree roots and avoiding the cost of removal. the council's arboricultural consultant supported the approach.
