News
14 November 2011
Tree House project - a lesson in sustainability
At the start of the autumn term, Place Farm Primary School in Haverhill, Suffolk, opened the doors of its new £2.4m sustainable two-storey teaching block and hall. In consultation with pupils and staff, Pick Everard’s creative Tree House project has also educated all those using the building in cutting edge sustainable design.
The vision for Place Farm Primary School was to create an inspiring and effective teaching environment using Low or Zero Carbon technologies (LZC’s), pushing the boundaries of sustainable design beyond BREEAM requirements on a restricted budget. Using design workshops right from the start, Pick Everard’s Tree House design concept immediately captured the imagination of staff and pupils and helped them learn what sustainability entailed in terms of building design.
To help pupils take ownership of their new building, Pick Everard gave each pupil a green pencil to colour the external façade at canopy level. Pupils could recognise their own panel and by seeing their children involved also engaged parents. A spokesperson for Place Farm Primary School explains, “During the design process for our new building project we were very keen to get staff and pupils involved right from the beginning. The children coloured in charts for the external cladding, they chose colours for toilet doors and we had class activities showing which materials were being used to build classrooms. We also took children round at different stages of construction so they could see progress of their designs and their new classrooms. Thanks to this we have all benefited from a new learning experience, learnt more about sustainability and the overall effect this will have in the future.”
Pick Everard has delivered a highly sustainable school building that gives users both ownership and more effective governance. Key sustainable elements are:
- Construction of the two-storey structure in 100% timber with screw pile foundations reduced off-site waste. Using locally-sourced prefabricated timber cassette panels with highly insulated hemp insulation and laminated timber beams for floors and roofs means the structure has very low CO2 embodied energy
- The building environment is designed to be 100% naturally ventilated using user control stack vents and underfloor heating using an Air Source Heat Pump (LZT’s) which reduces energy consumption and is more user-friendly. School caretaker Samantha Say has commented that the new heating system is “fantastic, efficient and easy to use compared to the system in the rest of the school”
- All materials were carefully selected to allow the building to be constructed from 90% Green Guide Rated A/A+ materials including recycled glass screed, high-recycled-content carpet tiles, Thermowood cladding - requiring no surface finish, recyclable aluminium upper cladding, and a roof system made from a high proportion of recycled content
Extensive consultations with the client, Suffolk County Council, and the school leadership team, led to innovation in terms of designing educational spaces too. Rather than creating one large classroom, Pick Everard proposed considerably smaller ones with shared activity areas and group rooms. The aim was to use space in a way that would increase pupil concentration and inclusion in the teaching environment and lead, in the longer term, to an improved Ofsted rating. A member of the leadership team explains, “The classrooms are very calming and the learning spaces for older children are much better. By having activity areas outside the classrooms for art, music or drama, there seems to be less disruption so this has worked extremely well.”
From the outset, Pick Everard sought to deliver a project that would raise the profile of the school in a deprived area of Suffolk and complement the urban/rural mix of the surrounding area. The Tree House project is visually inspiring as noted by Place Farm School Staff. “The design itself has worked very well and complemented its surroundings and the school, making all the pupils very proud of their new rooms and hall.”
John Sharp, Project Architect at Pick Everard comments, “We started with an ambitious vision, to use the project as a vehicle - we would provide the school with outstanding educational facilities and more effective teaching environments by creating a highly sustainable educational building and educating users and the local community in sustainable construction. Thanks to our client, Suffolk County Council and the Place Farm Primary School, we all worked together to maximise the opportunities the site presented and pushed the boundaries of sustainable educational design. Place Farm demonstrates that our role as designers can have a profound impact in the teaching environment. We hope that with extensive consultation throughout this successful project, we have inspired pupils and educated the next generation in sustainable building design.”
A multi-disciplinary Pick Everard team worked on the project which included architectural design, structural engineering, building services consultancy and BREEAM assessment, with Suffolk County Council’s Corporate Property Service Delivery Team undertaking the Project Management role throughout the project lifecycle. Pick Everard has been working with Suffolk County Council since 2008 on the Schools Organisation Review (www.suffolk.gov.uk/sor) for over 80 schools in the Haverhill and Lowestoft area; converting middle schools into primaries, building new schools and extending others – 24 have been completed and six are currently in progress on site.
