“It’s nice to see a school like this in London rather than Berlin or Amsterdam,” reflects its architect, Tony McGuirk of BDP. McGuirk worked with Gareth Jones, Helen Maudslay and an engineering colleague to take note of, Farahmand Jahanpour. Clearly they had the creative freedom to look beyond conventional models. Jahanpour’s structural concept is audacious - the centre of the building is hung from a steel bowspring arch on top. Freed from the usual fat internal columns, the result is clear space down below. When you see the big school hall in the basement, which opens up via folding doors to a sunken playground, you wonder at first what on earth is holding the building up.
The older the pupils are, the higher up the five-storey building they go, starting with the nursery at ground level. Each upper storey has three main rooms, mostly classrooms. Each floor connects via a bridge across a central lightwell to a broadly semicircular “play deck” surrounded by high and strong laminated-glass balustrades. The children romp around these decks as they would any playground - with the advantage that the bigger kids, being separated out on their own decks, cannot dominate proceedings at break-times. Because they are covered, both rain and strong sun cease to be a problem. Far from being scared of the transparent edges, the children are totally confident and like to run races around the perimeter. And right on top, where the big steel arch sits beneath a tented roof, a timber-decked garden terrace with a small technology classroom allows for the planting that such a vertical design would otherwise rule out.
You could see Hampden Gurney as the descendant of the vertically-stacked Victorian Board Schools - some of which, in inner-city areas, still have playgrounds on their roofs - but this takes the idea further by having the open decks on every level, not just on top. Nor does it look anything remotely like a school. The receptionist tells me that people tend to ring the bell and ask her if there are any flats left for sale, particularly on top. It’s got that high-design, loft-living look to it.
If this is the most radical of the present bunch of new schools, there are others that experiment in different ways. The new £4.8m Jubilee primary school at Tulse Hill in south London, by architects Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, is the result of a laudable initiative by Lambeth Council to improve its stock of schools by getting in selection of architects for different locations, chosen by competition. This was done under the eye of Sir Colin Stansfield Smith, whose former county architects’ department in Hampshire produced some of the best schools of recent years. The Jubilee School, which opens this September and was chosen as the launch venue for Architecture Week last Friday (June 21) has something of a 1930s Lido feel to it with its white-and-blue modern architecture and south-facing decks. The details count: it is designed with artist Martin Richman, furniture designer Andrew Stafford, and graphic designer Morag Myerscough, all contributing to the grown-up feel of the place. A double-decker arrangement for infants and juniors (with a split-level playground to match), it incorporates a wing for profoundly deaf children and also includes pre-school children. It is a somewhat idealistic community school in what can be a tough area.
