Michael Tippett school: Wilful disobedience

This is such an improvement on the mean-spirited, mean-windowed schools built under PFI. Walk into the double-height entrance lobby of the new Michael Tippett school in Lambeth, south London, and a wall of glass immediately beckons you, moth-like, to a light, spacious park on the other side. You almost drift past the reception desk in your hurry to get there. Is going to school supposed to feel like this?

The Michael Tippett school is the first school in London to be completed under the government’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme. Designed by London Eye architect Marks Barfield, the £7m building is a secondary school for 80 special needs students, several of them severely autistic. But all schools should heed its lesson.

To achieve the effect for the entrance lobby, the architect had to interpret the school building guidelines rather broadly. It’s supposed to be a library. When I ask where all the books are, architect Julia Barfield says: “We were creative with the brief. The library designation gives us the double-height space.”

Really it’s a social hub, casually furnished with tables and comfy chairs. The school’s head, Jan Stogdon, chips in that in the digital age, traditional libraries are no longer necessary.

The classrooms are even airier and lighter. Instead of the standard ceiling at a height of 2.7m, each one opens up into an airy void lit by clerestory windows front and back. The glazing continues across the entire external wall and down to a low sill, giving unrestricted views.

Stogdon is clearly relieved: “We were absolutely determined not to have low ceilings like our previous school.”

Visibility is the main idea here. The views out are uplifting, but internal lines of vision are essential too so staff can see what’s going on. “The previous school was full of nooks and crannies which was a nightmare to supervise,” Stogdon says.

People can also look in. The two-storey wing building comes hard up against the pavement on one side and ends in a sharp corner at the road intersection. “We wanted the school to be prominent,” says Stogdon. “Many students like uttering shrieks and wails, and if they are hidden behind a school wall, passers-by wonder what’s going on.”

To achieve the effect for the lobby, the architect had to interpret the school building guidelines rather broadly. It’s supposed to be a library

 

The building is easy to navigate as well. The main wayfinding ploy was the most basic in the book – colour-coding the doors to denote toilets, classrooms and staff rooms. “Everyone finds their way to the loo,” Stogdon says. Students are also encouraged to use staircases rather than lifts, even though it’s tougher for some. “We want students to become adapted to real adult life and look after themselves without high-tech remote control devices,” she says.

The form of the mainly two-storey school is not in itself compelling: your basic strip of rooms either side of a corridor, with a couple of kinks along its length. After considering 21 options, the kinked layout was selected because of the useful external spaces it created (see site plan below). On the entrance side, there’s a drop-off point for school buses and teacher car parking. On the other, there’s a private play area, landscaped into an attractive mini-park.

The sharp apex of the building encloses two attractive angular spaces with large windows along one side. They both serve as social spaces – the dining hall on the ground floor and the sixth-form common room upstairs.

Outside, free-standing laminated-timber columns spanned by vividly coloured metal louvres give the school its bright, cheery character. The louvres shade the ambitiously glazed classrooms while the columns hold up laminated-timber beams which, in turn, support flat, sedum-planted roofs.

The columns are not just a pretty face, however. They bring a longer-term practical benefit – adaptability. As the external walls and internal partitions have been disengaged from the structural frame, they can be relatively easily changed in the future.

“One of the main requirements for a school like this is flexibility,” says Stogdon. “We can never predict what sort of students we’ll be getting from year to year and what their particular needs will be.”

If schools are about encouraging learning and development, they can’t be oppressive and dispiriting. Stogdon clearly feels this one works. “We have an extraordinary range of students, some vulnerable, some difficult, and none have found this building intimidating because of its light and spacious feel.”