Education \ Additional Classrooms, Edinburgh Academy

Completed in 2011

The proposal was for new classrooms at the Edinburgh Academy Junior School Campus at Arboretum Road, Inverleith, Edinburgh. This proposal followed on from our previous work for the school and the completion of a new Nursery School, as well as the refurbishment of existing administration rooms. The accommodation design, encompassing primarily six new teaching spaces, is a response to the school's need to replace existing out of date accommodation. The new classroom accommodation is the continuation of the implementation of a wider masterplan strategy for the school, which attempts to deal with many of the functional issues of the school's day to day operation as well as face-lifting the existing public image of the school by providing a cohesive architectural language to what is at present a collection of architecturally disparate buildings. This project forms part of the school's implementation of a wider vision for the campus as a whole. The masterplan envisages a number of functional and aesthetic improvements to the campus over a number of phases.

The primary targets of the full masterplan are:

• The provision of a new fully accessible ramped access route and landscape to the school’s main entrance.
• A review of the existing vehicular drop off area with a view to reducing the area of tarmac to the schools entrance court with the potential for creating a new Landscaped court to the front of the nursery school.
• The completion of a one and a half storey high continual cloister on three sides of the entrance court linking the cloister on the existing nursery school with the junior school, main entrance and new classrooms on the north side and the existing sports hall to the south. This cloister will eventually act as a brise soleil to the large areas of glazing on the existing junior school south facing façade and will also act to reduce the impact of the less than satisfactory elevation of the sports centre to the south.
• The consideration of an alternative vehicle drop off strategy as part of a new entrance landscape.
• The internal rationalisation of the schools primary circulation routes. The proposed classroom development starts to address a number of these issues, and lays the foundation stone to allow the ongoing delivery of the masterplan.