‘You could run this building as a traditional school – but it would be a waste’

For my meeting with the principal of the new Marlowe Academy in Ramsgate, Kent, he leads me to the heart of his large new building. There’s no trudging down long corridors beneath suspended ceilings and between rows of classroom doors. Instead, the main entrance opens out into a grand theatrical volume that would do a concert hall or art gallery proud. It is a four-storey crescent, 20m wide and totally free of columns. A timber roof made up of triangular grids arches gently overhead. And daylight streams in through glazing in the centre of the roof, full-height window walls at either end and clerestory windows along one side.

As we sit down at a round table close to the canteen counter, pupils and staff pass by all around us and along two open galleries above. A group has congregated on a curvilinear open platform that juts into the hall on the second floor, and are crouched around an array of personal computers.

“The whole thrust of an academy is to do things differently, with new ways of teaching,” says the principal, Ian Johnson.

“In most schools, the bell goes and everyone rushes around to get to their next class. Here we have a more businesslike, work-based approach.

“We have an elongated day, running from 8.30am to 5 o’clock. Why send kids home to do their homework when they can do it here? The whole idea is do a day’s work and then go home. And lessons are two hours long, with a 15-minute break in the middle. This sets up a natural rhythm.”

Johnson was appointed principal in September 2005, nine months after construction had started on the project. The brief had been drawn up by Kent council and the Department for Education and Skills, and Roger de Haan, the former chairman of the Saga Corporation in Folkestone. The academy’s extraordinary and refreshing shape is the creation of an interdisciplinary team of architects and engineers at Building Design Partnership (BDP).

Although the timing of Johnson’s appointment gave him little scope to influence the design, he is happy to acknowledge that his unusual school timetable “has arisen out of the architecture”. “You could run this building as a traditional school,” he says, “but, in my opinion, it would have been a waste.”

At this point, teenagers Chrissie Grindle and Maxine Penn walk past and josh the school principal as though he was one of their classmates. Spontaneously, they sit down and join in the conversation. “It’s just like a college here,” says Chrissie. “It’s all contained in one building and it’s all open inside the building. So the teachers and the students get on well with each other. And people can’t get bullied. It’s a lot safer than our old school building.”

As for the long school day and two-hour classes, she says: “I’m not a swot, but you get absorbed in the classes. You can use the computers or laptops in class.”

Maxine agrees: “People used to bunk off in the old school. They don’t do that here. And staying on till 5 o’clock helps parents who work.” Chrissie even has a good word to say about the ubiquitous, if inconspicuous, CCTV cameras. “That means there’s no graffiti on the walls, like there was on the old school. You don’t want to come in and see some new graffiti every day.”

The old school, which was built close by in the 1960s, is now being demolished to make way for its successor’s sports pitches. Its persistently poor record in educational achievement is what led to creation of the new academy.

Under the government’s academy concept, a civic-minded individual or organisation must act as sponsor, providing £2m and an inspirational vision for the new school. At Marlowe, Roger de Haan, is joint sponsor with the county council.

In most schools, the bell goes and everyone rushes around to get to their next class. Here we have a more businesslike, work-based approach

The academy retains the old school’s vocational syllabus based on BTec qualifications, with A levels to be introduced next year. But it focuses on the new specialisms of performing arts, sports, and art and design, selected with the help of de Haan. “Performing arts builds confidence and this part of Ramsgate has lots of people lacking in confidence,” says Johnson.

Modelling the school on an adult-education college is precisely what Benedict Zucchi, BDP’s architectural director, had in mind for the design. “It has more of a campus feel, but made as compact as possible,” he says. “This was our response to the sponsors’ vision of bringing all 1,100 students and 100 staff together as a community of learners.

The other main driver in Zucchi’s design was the school’s three teaching faculties of performing arts, sports and technology. These have been physically interpreted as three curving petals that fold together around a central void. This void is that crescent hall where I sat with the principal and two pupils. It is self-evidently the social heart of the school, just as de Haan and Zucchi had intended.

The central hall also serves as the circulation core of the building. It does so with the help of two full-height but slightly narrower extensions at either end and the access decks to the classrooms on the two upper floors. The lack of corridors means no congestion chaos between classes and fewer opportunities for bullying.

In an ingenious twist to the configuration, the performing arts wing has been symmetrically shaped around a large auditorium and set on the central axis of the arena. When the partition at the back of the stage is rolled out of the way to either side, the stage flows into the arena, and is overlooked by the auditorium seating at the back. In this way, the arena can be effortlessly doubled in capacity for use in assemblies of the whole school, as well as musical and theatrical performances.

The two elongated extensions to the arena function as open-plan study areas, where students working on PCs are quite deliberately on show. One of these study areas on the ground floor serves art and design and the other on the first floor forms the heart of the sixth-form wing. Another large space on ground floor is the school library, which doubles as a public branch library and has its own entrance.

Turning to the building’s external design, Zucchi says: “We wanted to make the school a civic destination in the town, as it is a centre for adult learning with public library and community sports facilities.”

The main challenge here lay in the site, which is remorselessly flat and devoid of features, other than a dejected scattering of ageing council semis in the distance.

Within this dismal setting, the compact, curvilinear academy stands out as a colourful, sculptural landmark. The performing arts and public library wings are parted by a wedge-shaped civic piazza that leads the visitor to the glazed main entrance. The performing arts wing on the left is a soft, curvilinear two-storey block with a mustard-yellow facade and large ground-floor windows displaying the pirouetting dancers within. The public library wing on the right, by contrast, is a hard-edged, rectilinear, three-storey block clad in horizontal timber ribbing stained terracotta in colour.

The library wing also provides the vital bulk and height that the new building needs as an antidote to its flat and featureless setting. In another inspired design twist, the wing’s bulk and height have resulted from piggy-backing the school’s full-size sports hall directly on top of the library. Zucchi adds: “Leaving the sports hall at ground level would have killed off the social activity around the arena.” It also backs on to the four-storey sixth-form wing of similar height.

As is evident from Chrissie and Maxine, the Marlowe Academy and its marvellous new building have already boosted the self-confidence of its pupils. The next step will be to improve their educational performance – and the building is superbly qualified to play its part in achieving that.