New Junior School offers a lesson in modern building practices

Architects Hawkins Brown designs new BREEAM rated school.

The new Junior School for the Girls Day School Trust Notting Hill & Ealing High School designed by Architects Hawkins\Brown is a true lesson in sustainability. Rated BREEAM Excellent, the school serves as a model of combining best modern building practices with academic excellence.

The architects worked closely with the school and were keen the building represented an opportunity to empower the students with knowledge and skills to contribute positively towards the green transition and instil optimism through actionable change. The result is an educational establishment which is environmentally responsible, providing high-quality teaching facilities for generations to come. The school is designed to be fully accessible internally and externally. The site includes 14 new classrooms, with additional Sixth Form classrooms, specialist teaching spaces for music, art, science and computing, a light-filled library with a rooftop lantern, and a large hall suitable for assemblies, performances, PE and events. The addition of a science garden and forest school area add to the inside-outside learning experience.

From the outset, it was decided to use the most environmentally-friendly building materials. The building has a sustainable wooden frame, south-facing photovoltaic panels on the saw tooth roof to catch the most sunlight and supply electricity, north-facing roof lights for daylight with limited solar gain, a highly insulated and airtight building fabric, air source heat pumps and a heat recovery system to keep the warmth in the building while allowing fresh air in, and noise-reducing wood wool acoustic panelling inside.

Ms K Bevan, Head of Junior School commented, “With its environmentally-friendly features, the building not only serves as an inspiring learning environment but as a physical embodiment of the lasting impact our girls can make in the realm of sustainability.”

With strict government regulations in place regarding acoustics and controlling reverberating sound within education environments, Anderson Acoustics was appointed to provide acoustic advice for the redevelopment of the site. All new school buildings and redesigns must comply with the Government’s BB93 Acoustic Standards. Building Bulletin 93 (BB93), part of the Building Regulations, presents minimum standards for school acoustics in terms of sound reverberation time and internal ambient noise levels.

In order to satisfy the requirements of BB93, new classrooms need to have a reverberation time of <0.6 seconds between 500hz-2000hz. Taking this into consideration, while also sourcing products which help contribute acoustic credits Hea05 and Pol05 in order to obtain BREEAM accreditation, Troldtekt’s acoustic wood wool panelling was specified across many areas to control the acoustics in the building and provide a quiet environment for learning. The result is so effective that some spaces are now used during exams as they’re much quieter than the sixth form centre.