Our project at Clifton All Saints Academy has recently completed. The brief was to provide the School with two additional classrooms to enable them to accommodate years 5 and 6 changing them from a Lower School to a Primary School.

The school is situated in the heart of Clifton Village and therefore the site is very constrained, being built up on three sides the space for expansion was very limited.

Through the feasibility process it was clear the only way to fit the new classrooms on the site was to build up, this would involve the demolition of a section of building at the rear of the site and a new two-storey extension was built on a slightly larger footprint in one direction and a reduction in the other therefore enabling a larger playground to be created.

To minimise the mass of the building a monopitch roof was introduced, this helped with keeping the height of the building to a minimum. The type of materials were important to the project, given the natural feel of the site with a large wooded area at the back of the School, a sedum roof was installed to help with biodiversity and to help the building blend in with its surroundings and timber cladding was used to break up the brickwork.

As part of the design we wanted to ensure that the new and old parts of the School worked together, as with many Schools built in the 1970’s there were no corridors, just room through room walkways. With minor adjustments to two existing classrooms there was enough space to create a new corridor that links to the new extension which immensely improves the flow of the school.

The completed project gives the school four new classrooms, two group rooms and an Intervention/Breakout room with a net increase in building footprint of 32m².