Stratford School Academy
London
Stratford School Academy, was the first school in the London PSBP batch. The Academy expanded to a 1500 student academy split over two sites, Grosvenor Road and Upton Lane, each housing 750 students. The latter site accommodates a resourced provision for 20 students on the autistic spectrum and the Sports hall is shared between both schools.
Upton Lane
The main entrance provides a strong visual focus for the building on the main road. The building is arranged over 4 floors around a toplit dining space.
Grosvenor Road
To reinforce the synergy between the two sites, solid coloured panels were introduced to the protruding first floor block which slides out over the external dining area.
NHA have been very professional and their understanding of school architecture and design has been excellent.Ian Skinmore, EFA Project Director
Flexible and adaptable
Our Design for Stratford School Academy adopts a model that optimises adaptability, economy and repeatability. This is achieved through a compact building diagram, which minimises circulation space and optimises gross floor area.
Flexible classrooms, whether for general or specialist teaching, are located around the perimeter, forming a crust of learning, establishing a system that sets the basic form and dimensions of the teaching and learning accommodation as ‘bars’, which can grow incrementally as needed.
Optimising the brief
Creative articulation of the specification and brief was necessary to balance challenging budgets, to provide facilities to enable the split school sites to operate independently, to facilitate the new autistic spectrum facility at Upton Lane and to meet the school’s aspirations.
Detailed discussions established a construction sequence that would provide a refurbished and extended Grosvenor Road site capable of accommodating the whole school whilst the existing Upton Lane building was demolished and rebuilt.
Specialist spaces
Specialist facilities, including multi-functional hall spaces, dining and the larger uninterrupted internal volumes, are located centrally, with support spaces located between them. This allows these secondary spaces to benefit from the natural daylight and ventilation of the adjacent larger spaces.
Our Team
- Michael Bayly
- Joanna Billings
- Jayne Bird
- Stephen Golding
- Katherine Graham
- Tom Guy
- John Jeffery
- Niamh O'Reily
- Janet Stapleton
- Ronan White
- Sarah Williams
Project Team
- Client: EFA (Education Funding Agency)
- Cost Planning: BAM
- Structural Engineer: Watermans
- Services Engineer: Watermans
- Acoustician: Sound Research Laboratories
- Fire Engineer: Watermans
- Planning Consultant: Turley Assocaites
- Interior Design: BAM
- Photography: Alan Williams
