inspiringEDUCATiOn

practice

The Directors of Mitchell Eley Gould Architects collectively have over 20 years experience working with schools in both the private and state sector and have designed buildings for science, theatre, learning, boarding, sport and music.

Mitchell Eley Gould are an award winning architecture practice, and have been described as one of the ‘freshest and most inspired’ practices today. Instead of being motivated by a predetermined stylistic sensibility, our objective is always to engage fully with our client’s aspirations and the rich tapestries of site and brief.

We have designed a significant number of buildings, ranging in value from £100k to £10m which have been published internationally. We are particularly interested in the broader experiential qualities of architecture, whether instrumental (how it acts), aesthetic (what it looks like) or sensual (how it is sensed or felt) and the positive effect that this can have on the learning environment.

KingswoodClassroom BuildingMitchell Eley Gould

Mitchell Eley Gould won a competition to design a new teaching block for eight new classrooms, and three departmental resource areas for Kingswood School in Bath. The site is located within both the Conservation Area and the World Heritage designation.

The teaching block is located adjacent to the Ferens building which was constructed in 1924-1926 and was designed by William A Forsyth. The new teaching block has been designed to connect simply with the existing Ferens building and the Kingswood site on a whole. A large overhang providing canopy connects to a triangular plan shaped central circulation area which allows for the pupils to display and exhibit their work and from this space the classrooms have a direct link. The classrooms have been designed for the teaching of humanities and social sciences. The idea for the building was to create a place that works using a very simple yet effective sustainability strategy which allows natural light and ventilation deep into the plan of the building. The form and roof structure of the proposed building is a response to the existing Ferens building and the tall windows and perforate panels allow distant views and air into the spaces.

DETAILS Completed: September 2013Contract: JCT ICD 2011Value: £1700 sq.mDuration: 32 weeks

“The new teaching block offers a wonderful environment for learning. Its modernity and design allow for stimulating lesson delivery and the location offers an effective mergence between old and new - we are lucky to be a part of it”

Kingswood Head of Religious EducationMatthew Thatcher

Kings CollegeLibraryMitchell Eley Gould

The new library and classrooms at Kings College, Taunton are the result of working closely with the school to develop a brief and a design for a learning environment that meets the challenges of a contemporary education. The design was born in part from the sustainability agenda that aimed to minimise the energy utilised in running the building with internal volumes that encourage stack effect natural ventilation, a super insulated shell and the use of natural recyclable materials. The witches hat roof form presents roof lights to the north thus introducing indirect natural daylight to the library and classrooms. The challenge of working alongside the mid nineteenth century Grade II listed buildings constructed of sandstone was met with the decision to use a mix of four bricks and a lime mortar that reflects the texture and character of the original stone walls. The building was described by the Bursar as a ‘stunning’ addition to the school’s estate and in the words of the librarian will provide the opportunity to significantly increase the examination grades of the pupils and the enjoyment of the learning experience.

AWARDS Architect of the Year Award Education

Sector 2011- FinalistArchitect of the Year 2012 - SubmissionBrick Awards - Best Education Building

- ShortlistedRIBA Awards - RIBA South West

Excellence in Architecture Award 2012 - Winner

FEATUREDArchitect’s JournalBuilding DesignArchDaily

DETAILS Completed: May 2011Contract: JCT Intermediate FormValue: £2,250/sq.mDuration: 48 weeks

Mitchell Eley Gould’s “commitment to producing a high quality end product is unquestionable”

Kings College Bursar Alan Prosser

pangbourne College

Music and iCT FacilitiesMitchell Eley Gould

The Communications Building at Pangbourne College combines a music school and ICT facilities together under one roof and is the first stage in the rationalisation of the school campus, rendering redundant ageing buildings that are to be demolished as part of a larger masterplan for the site that came out of an academic space audit. The music hall is clad in Metal Mesh and the ICT facilities in timber. The composition of the building volume responds to its immediate site context and closes a courtyard bounded by the main assembly hall, library and classrooms.

The building provides a recital hall, music teaching rooms, classrooms and an ICT suite with a drop in centre, bringing music, information technology and the performing arts together.

DETAILS Completed: May 2012Cost: £1.5mContract: Traditional JCT 05 Value: £1,875/sq.mDuration: 45 weeks

The building has “galvanised attitudes towards learning......but more significantly the excitement and enthusiasm of pupils has elevated the place of music in the school. If I could bottle that excitement I would”

Pangbourne College Head Teacher Thomas Garnier

AWARDS RIBA award submission 2010Architect of the Year award 2012 - Submission

FEATUREDArchDailyArchitect’s JournalBuilding DesignArchicree (France)

Badminton Boarding Housesanderson HouseMitchell Eley Gould

Sanderson House, for Badminton School, is a new, purpose built 94 place boarding house, on a highly constrained site in a conservation area in Bristol. The project, which has a green roof and is clad in untreated Siberian Larch (which has a 75 year maintenance free life span), is highly sustainable, superinsulated, and heated by an extremely efficient Combined Heat and Power Plant capable of providing heat and hot water to this building and others on the school campus.

Mitchell Eley Gould were commissioned in 2006, and spent the initial period of the appointment carrying out feasibility study options to determine the optimum location for the building, which was completed on time and on budget (£2,800,000) in September 2008.

DETAILS Completed: August 2008Contract: JCT Intermediate FormValue: £1,550/sq.mDuration: 56 weeks

“...... A triumph” Architects Journal

room 13room 13Mitchell Eley Gould

Iconic new highly sustainable RIBA Award winning community art studio in the most deprived part of the south west, voted the #1 modern architectural wonder in the South West by Venue Magazine. Room 13 was designed by Mitchell Eley Gould through a process of intense community and user consultation, and is, in the words of Nicholas Serota “The most important model for art education we have in the UK. Venue Magazine said: ‘it instantly warmed my heart, and reminded me that more than anything, architecture is about people’.

Users have described the experience of being in the building as:

“... Hugely Inspiring .. it transforms me to another world of sanctuary and inspiration”

AWARDS RIBA Award - WINNERRIBA Town and Country Awards - Sustainability Award WINNERSRICS Awards - Building of the Year Award - StortlistedBBC Best Public Building Award - Shortlisted

FEATUREDArchitect’s JournalBuilding DesignRIBA JournalSketch - Public Buildings Venue Magazine

DETAILS Completed: February 2008Contract: JCT Intermediate FormValue: £1,140/sq.mDuration: 26 weeks

“... A world first, changing the lives of kids for the better”

pangbourne CollegeBoarding HouseMitchell Eley Gould

The new boarding house at Pangbourne College provides 47 bed boarding and two houses wrapped around two new garden courtyards.

The L-shaped plan turns along the existing woodland edge and contains a new garden for the girls at the entrance as well as a private courtyard garden at the rear. The building offers a new façade to the College parade ground that reflects the quality brickwork used on the C19th Devitt house and then unpeels to use a textured timber cladding as the building moves away toward the woodland.

The building succeeds in creating a light and airy atmosphere by use of large opening windows coupled with rooflights and discreet sun-pipes as a simple daylight and natural ventilation strategy. The steel frame structure provides support for the external cladding and floors and deep insulation wraps up the envelope to provide a sustainable building with a very stable thermal environment. The building uses Passivhaus standards as the basis of the design and will take very little heating.

DETAILS Completed: September 2012Contract: JCT Intermediate FormCost: £2.5m

Mitchell Eley Gould “design with flair whilst still produc-ing buildings that are efficient to construct”Pangbourne College Estates Bursar Matthew Prior

Colerne schoolDining HallMitchell Eley Gould with Charley Brentnall

The project was used as an education vehicle for a school in Colerne. The dining hall is part of a wider initiative concerned with growing and producing local healthy food and its design and construction were the result of a series of educational workshops held by the architects at the school.

DETAILS Completed: August 2011Contract: JCT Minor WorksValue: £180kDuration: 16 weeks

AWARDSArchitect of the Year Award2012 - Submission

FEATUREDArchitects Journal

“It is extraordinary to see the creative energies that can be unleashed”Architects Journal - 31 March 2011

st Helen’s and st Katherines schoolscience BuildingMitchell Eley Gould

St Helen and St Katharines School had nine classrooms dedicated to teaching science, mostly over 50 years old and recognised that these spaces were inadequate in size, number, servicing and layout for modern science teaching, and with science becoming increasingly popular as a subject amongst the pupils.

The conversion a number of the existing science classrooms into support space for the Science Department and the construction of a new wing containing twelve dedicated science classrooms addressed the issue.

As a part of the School’s desire to promote science as an exciting field of learning the building includes interactive break-out spaces for informal study and display and the atrium provides a space for occasional large gatherings and presentations.

A key requirement is that the building was to be constructed with a minimum of disruption to the operation of the School and in particular the adjacent teaching spaces which remained in operation during contract.

The Edwardian facade was largely preserved and the new building provided a contemporary intervention amongst the surrounding listed buildings.

DETAILS Completed: September 2014Contract: Design and Build WCD 11Value: £4.75mDuration: 15 months

BadmintonLibrary ExtensionMitchell Eley Gould

The original building was designed by Sir Hugh Casson in the 1970’s, then a Governor at the school and whilst an interesting space for the library with an innovative naturally lit raised roof, was showing signs of wear and tear and was in need of modernisation.

Mitchell Eley Gould worked sensitively on what is an important building on the site to refurbish and update the library and reorganise the teaching spaces and staff accommodation on the ground floor through a single storey extension and the rationalisation of the entrance space and circulation. The external render was repaired and redecorated and the building reroofed to collectively provide a contemporary teaching and learning space for the next 50 years.

DETAILS Completed: July 2009Contract: JCT Intermediate Form ICD05Value: £290kDuration: 16 weeks

John Cabot Academyscience super LabMitchell Eley Gould

The new science superlab was developed in response to the need for increased flexibility in teaching the sciences to larger and combined year groups by creating a multi functional teaching and presentation space as well as a sub-divided laboratory available for science teaching and acting as a float classroom to other subjects. The utilisation of the spaces is therefore significantly increased and the opportunity to share the learning experience between the year group enhanced.

The layout allows both the traditional laboratory configuration with fixed serviced work benches along the window wall and a linear or island classroom layout for teaching the theoretical content of the subject.

Science superlabsPhotograph - Rob Mitchell

DETAILS Completed: August 2010Contract: JCT Minor WorksValue: £90kDuration: 8 weeks

Baileys CourtButterfly HiveMitchell Eley Gould

School design workshops were held with the children of Baileys Court Junior School in Bristol following the sad death of a former pupil from leukemia. The school along with the family wanted his memory to inform, in a positive way, a new project in the school grounds. His passion was butterflies and the school setting was perfect for a brief devoted to watching them in the wild. The design development of the hide came out of a number of studio workshops with the school children building models and testing real ideas in situ on site. Once a design was agreed with the school the children were then involved in the construction of the hide on site.

The hide is just six square meters internally and constructed from locally sourced timber. A skewed treated softwood frame sits on simple concrete pad foundations with a skin of Larch wrapping the interior space and filtering light.

DETAILS Completed: June 2011Contract: NegotiatedValue: £12kDuration: 6 weeks

Bicycle shelter

shelter, Colerne primary schoolMitchell Eley Gould with Charley Brentnall and School Children

Recently completed, this shelter was the product of a unique collaboration between Mitchell Eley Gould and Charley Brentnall who ran a series of design workshops with the primary age children at Colerne Primary School in response to a green transportation grant that was available to the school.

Through a process of discussion, drawing and modelling the pupils developed their ideas about the bike shelter and were involved in the construction of the structure that sits in a prominent location on the main approach to the school buildings.

DETAILS Completed: August 2010Contract: NegotiatedValue: £5kDuration: 6 weeks

John Cabot Academysports changing facilitiesMitchell Eley Gould

The refurbishment of the existing sports changing and staff accommodation at John Cabot Academy was completed during the summer break of 2010, rationalising the space to meet Sport England standards for an increased number of pupils and decorating the circulation spaces with a life size sports themed mural to inspire and encourage the pupils.

DETAILS Completed: August 2010Contract: JCT Minor Works FormValue: £160kDuration: 8 weeks

space AuditMitchell Eley Gould

The purpose of this academic space audit is to determine the degree to which the allocation of teaching spaces for specialist and non specialist subjects are appropriately located within the school, provide the facilities necessary for the subject to be delivered effectively and a framework for decision making in the future should alterations to the teaching requirements be necessary.

The space audit provides a strategic document that can be used as a means of measuring the validity of decisions to change the current arrangements in the future and to justify the allocation of space to each subject.

There are two sections to the space audit, the first of which is as a result of the survey of the existing teaching spaces and an analysis of the timetable to arrive at an utilisation percentage for each of the teaching spaces.

The second section of the space audit uses a measurement system determined by the DfES Area Guidelines for Schools (1996) and is based on the requirements of Building Bulletin 98 for timetabled teaching areas.

The DfES system is primarily intended as a means of determining the facilities required to deliver the curriculum to a given number of pupils and is used both in the design of new schools and the remodelling of existing schools.

Mitchell Eley Gould Ltd.Wharf Studio, Widcombe HillBath, BA1 6AA01225 789033www.mitchelleleygould.co.uk