Turnham Primary School

Turnham Primary School in Brockley needed to provide additional facilities on a tight site for their expanding pupil numbers. The solution was a large extension at roof level that would also benefit from views across the neighbourhood.

The zinc clad second floor extension, completed in early 2018, provides extra classrooms, special education needs (SEN) rooms, and a dance hall that can accommodating 300 pupils. The dance hall features a deliberately expressed natural timber structure which has the added advantage of allowing the children to understand how their school has been constructed. Lined with birch ply timber panels, the hall is a warm, unimpeded space for assembly, dance and sports that is flooded with daylight from large windows running along its length.

All of the new rooms in the extension are naturally ventilated using the Breathing Building system. This is a natural low energy natural ventilation solution which uses passive roof terminals in conjunction with opening windows to ventilate the spaces, and it has integrated natural air circulation system and acoustic panels…

Continuing the focus on nature and natural materials, the extension provides an ecology terrace with edible planting for use in the practical classroom, and bespoke birch ply furniture in the classrooms.

Throughout the new floor high acoustic performance was achieved using expressed acoustic panels.

The school remained in operation during the construction programme with pupils temporarily accommodated in porta cabins in the school grounds. When these are vacated, the area will become a valuable garden space for the children. The design and construction teams worked very closely with the teachers to ensure that there was no disruption to the children and the teaching programme, including using simple timber technology for the structure to reduce programme length and noise.

Our practice was appointed by the main contractor to develop the initial design by PTE Architects. The concept design was therefore developed by careful detailing and a series of proposals were implemented to add safety and material quality to the composition.