Michál Cohen admires the boldness of the approach taken by OMA and Brighton College in a School of Science and Sport

Words
Michál Cohen
Photos
Laurian Ghinitoiu, Kilian O’Sullivan

In recent years, Brighton College has recruited a ‘Who’s Who’ of British architects – such as Eric Parry, Allies & Morrison, Hopkins, Tim Ronalds – to decorate its campus with award-winning buildings, at the same time proving the value of a robust masterplan and good leadership, with headmaster Richard Cairns closely involved in the selection of architects. It would be nice to think that the school’s high-quality facilities played a part in it being named England’s Independent School of the Year 2019 by The Sunday Times.

Established in 1845, Brighton College, a co-ed boarding and day school, has always had a reputation for good architecture, including historic gothic buildings by Sir George Gilbert Scott, and a progressive ethos that helped shape British education. In fact, the school was a pioneer in providing both the first purpose-built science laboratory and gymnasium in the late nineteenth century. So perhaps it is no surprise that for its latest building, the School of Science and Sport, the college brought the two subjects together under one roof and commissioned OMA to design its first secondary school building.

And if you’re going to employ OMA, you should expect something innovative.

Top: The School of Sport and Science viewed across the playing fields, known as Home Ground (ph: LG).
Above: The west facade, onto Sutherland Road, faces both an estate of retail sheds and a row of semi-detached houses (ph: LG).

The school’s vision was to connect the sciences with sport, breaking the traditional silos of departmental teaching and creating a visual connection between what was going on inside the building and the impressive playing fields outside. OMA’s building responds very well to the vision, with an enormous amount of glazing internally and externally. In addition, the architects played with levels and flowing circulation space so that you never quite know what floor you are on and in which department.

I was guided to the building from the main school entrance, which, with older buildings set around a landscaped courtyard, would feel at home at any traditional Oxbridge college. OMA’s building slowly reveals itself with a large stepped plaza, reaching out like the walkway of a spaceship – a comparison made by Richard Cairns and others during our tour of the building with OMA partner Ellen van Loon and the project team.

The building sits to the west of the campus on a site that slopes from the northern boundary down to the south. From the road to the west the building appears to reduce in scale as one moves further north, so that by the time it arrives at the northern boundary it is in scale with the surrounding buildings. It’s quite the iceberg, with a basement housing the pool and a car park for 11 minibuses (accessed via a car lift), encouraging a car-free campus.

The terraced green roof offers sea views and accommodates a running track (phs: LG). The design of the facades was inspired in part by the regular rhythm of terraced housing facing the new building across Home Ground, suggests the architect.

The foyer is on the first floor and features timber floors, egg-crate ceilings, dark walls and transparent curtains, low-level sofas and VW vans serving coffee: this could easily be the foyer of a theatre or trendy arthouse cinema. The student showing me to the building loved the lights in the foyer best, describing them as “a bit Harry Potter”.

From here, generous stairs take you up to the science areas or down to the sports facilities. A level access entrance takes you to the basement for the changing rooms and swimming pool.

All spaces to the east of the building have full-height, full-width glazing onto the sports fields. This is unimpeded by opening vents because of a clever natural ventilation system which brings fresh air in through floor grilles and slim wall ventilators in the cross partitions between spaces.

This transparency was key for the headmaster, who saw a synergy between sport and science. As a boarding school, sport is essential and over 40 per cent of the campus is dedicated to it.

The intention was that sports activities could be seen in the building and on the fields and then analysed in the classrooms. While views of the fields are inspiring, there is only one window into the sports hall from within, at the end of a corridor rather than from learning spaces, which seems like a lost opportunity.

The hall, set a full floor lower than the surrounding residential area but at the same level as the playing field, is an impressive space with cast glass to the west (providing light but prohibiting views) and full glazing to the east.

OMA carried out research on glass interlayers to ensure that glazing onto the playing fields was not vulnerable to breakage. In addition, games permitted in the hall are limited to basketball, netball and cricket played within nets reminiscent of the transparent curtains in the foyer. The black of the egg-crate ceiling wraps down onto a sloped black wall which Ellen van Loon explained was angled to shape the space and help with acoustics.

The weights room is impressively kitted out, with mirrors on the western wall (and in the adjacent studio) reflecting the playing field and houses along Walpole Terrace. It is good to see that even in a school building with a £36.7m budget, the use of sliding folding doors between the foyer and studio allows the school to use these spaces in different ways.

The roof is the only place on the campus that you see the sea and OMA has taken advantage of this by providing a 50-metre running track, outdoor learning and a social space which will be used when not too windy.

The palette of materials is restrained and details slick and apparently effortless (although those of us who design buildings know this is incredibly difficult to achieve). This includes full-height glazing externally, dark grey glass-reinforced concrete and insulated cast glass.

Internally there are timber or Marmoleum floors with carpet in two spaces only, black or non-reflective silver wall panels with mosaic tiling in wet areas, and either a black or white egg-crate ceiling. Furniture is mostly bespoke: the lockers glow yellow from within, magically, and are located in a circulation volume, providing passive supervision. In most areas, lighting is set above the egg-crate ceiling. This is a good move, creating a mysterious light source and also reducing the spend on expensive fittings.

The laboratories are striking, sandwiched between full-height glazing to the outside and circulation. The bespoke black lab furniture is well made but fixed, in rows and facing the teacher’s wall at the front – very traditional and not flexible should the school wish to promote different ways of learning.

The breakout spaces are generous on the ground and first floors, but less so outside the labs: the corridor is double-loaded and the overabundance of black can feel quite oppressive, even with the fully-glazed walls between the corridor and lab and outside. These spaces lack variety and room to pin things up so it will be interesting to see how the breakout areas are used. However, it is clear what they wanted to achieve. Van Loon believes that “education buildings should not be efficient; they should offer unexpected and different spaces to foster creative thinking”. Given that the latest Building Bulletin standards cut areas in schools to a minimum, the Department for Education should take note of this.

This is an unapologetically OMA building, recognisable by many of the design devices it has employed over the years: seemingly randomly angled columns and walls; large overhangs to protect entrances; sloped ceilings; stepped planes through a building that are expressed on the outside (Educatorium, 1995); large steps up to the entrance that act like an urban plaza; transparent versus translucent; effortless slick detailing; wonderful quality of light. While the levels are complex, the plan is linear and easy to navigate.

From an urban perspective, the building is bold when viewed from the terraced houses to the east across the playing fields; from here you can see the activity within. However, when viewed from the homes to the west, the expanse of cast glass is relentless and may cause light spill-out at night: this elevation is more like the light-industrial area to the south-west of the site.

“Level shifts, grand staircases and glass visually connect the activities taking place in both departments and trigger unexpected exchanges between different disciplines”, says OMA. “Individual components of the building are exposed to each other: an indoor running track on the ground floor is visible from upper levels, classrooms have floor to ceiling windows, even fume hoods in the chemistry classrooms are made transparent – enabling people walking down the hallway to witness ongoing experiments” (phs: KO, LG).

The building also seems to eschew some Building Regulations, taking it from the mundane to something special. The main stair does not have balustrades at 1800mm centres, there does not seem to be a consistent level of natural light in the teaching spaces (allowing for deeper, narrow laboratories), and there is no Equality Act-compliant access to the main entrance or a couple of the laboratories. Of course, an independent school client is freer to deviate from these things, and it is refreshing to see that Brighton College believed so much in the design that it chose to accept the derogations.

Despite my few niggles, this is a bold and uncompromising building, one that does not feel like a school and has not pandered to its context; as Richard Cairns said, it’s a “spacecraft that has arrived from the skies”. The sense of transparency and views between and through interior spaces and to the sports fields to the east will, I am sure, make this brave and exciting building very special to inhabit.

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