Dartington CE primary school
White Design has been commissioned to design a new home for Dartington CE Primary School, near Totnes in Devon. The £6M project, which was completed in February 2010, provides places for 420 pupils.
The previous school hds a wonderful, vibrant environment, where the quality of learning was outstanding. The challenge for us as designers was to understand and transpose this unique quality into a new building, to be located on an adjacent field. Early in the design process, White Design organised a series of consultation events to ensure that the new school fully reflects the aspirations of pupils, teachers and the wider community.
The brief reflected the client’s wish to re-create the existing pattern of individual classrooms within the landscape, so a school building without corridors became a strong component of the design. Devon County Council and the local community have a strong environmental ethos, reflected in the aim for Dartington to be the first zero carbon primary school in Britain. It is on target to be the highest rated BREEAM school in the UK. With around 90% of the building fabric made from timber this helps to create a major ‘carbon bank’ when calculating the embodied carbon and embodied energy of the project. Even the external seating and raised planters have been made using timber off-cuts from the building.
The 14 single storey classrooms are square in plan, arranged with additional facilities to form year group clusters around courtyard gardens. Each classroom is orientated slightly differently to allow daylight to enter through a large north-facing 3m2 rooflight. The slope of the roof is arranged at 300 for photo voltaic panels on one side and at 600 for daylighting on the other.
Additional environmental features incorporated into the design include a highly insulated envelope, rainwater recycling, grey water filter reed bed system, a sustainable drainage system, heat recovery ventilation, air source heat pumps and the opening up of an existing culvert to create a wetland habitat.
We were keen to maintain the previous building’s strong relationship to the surrounding landscape, so the connection between classroom and landscape is a high priority, with each classroom opening directly into its own landscaped garden, encouraging each year group to care for their external space and develop a sense of ownership. A habitat trail, a pond with dipping platform and a kitchen garden where pupils can grow herbs, fruit and vegetables, all contribute to the idea of an outdoor classroom and learning through play. There is even a reptile hybernacula - or “hotel” for lizards - in the grounds.
View the dedicated construction website for Dartington primary school http://dartington.white-design.co.uk
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