This was the one that first made them famous. Go there today and all you see is a run-down modernist comprehensive school like hundreds of others. But in its day (1949-54) it was revolutionary. A homage to the great German modernist architect Mies van der Rohe, its steel-frame construction with brick and glass panels was more like a factory. Wondering where to put the water tank on all those flat roofs, the Smithsons instead set it high on a freestanding tower like a heroic campanile.

The glass cracked, the pupils alternately roasted and froze, and black panels eventually replaced much of the glass in order to fix the problem. Some teachers at the school came to hate it. But as one of the first products of the 1944 Education Act, it set the tone for a brave new world of schooling.