New Zealand Commercial Design Trends Series NZ Commercial Design Trends Vol. 34/02C | Page 42

Project
Marlborough Primary School
Location:
Chelsea, London
Architect:
Dixon Jones
VERTICAL VIRTUOSITY
Cascading terraces provide pupils at Chelsea’s Marlborough Primary School with
light-filled classrooms and expansive outside play and learning areas
Previous pages:Marlborough
Primary School redevelopment
in Chelsea creates an inclusive
and inspiring 21st Century
learning environment along
with a commercial building and
pedestrian link. The scheme
replaces a Victorian school which
had stood on the site since 1878.
Left:The street elevations
command a strong civic presence
and feature robust brick and
stone detailing influenced by the
original Victorian school.
Right:The community entrance
to the school engages positively
with the wider public, whilst the
pedestrian link beside the new
commercial building increases
the previously restricted access
between local streets.
While the nature of today’s schools and what
goes on inside them undoubtedly has little in
common with what passed as education 140 years
ago, there are still some schools that have had to
shoehorn modern educational practices into build-
ings that date back a couple of centuries.
Until recently, Marlborough Primary School in
Chelsea had been one such school – occupying
a Victorian building that had been on its site since
1878. But the building‘s replacement programme
by architects Dixon Jones has propelled the school
dramatically into the future, providing an environ-
ment that allows pupils to enjoy all the flexibility,
openness and variety of 21st century pedagogy.
Project architect Paul Jolly says the extremely
challenging redevelopment brief was the product
of an unusually convoluted planning negotiation,
search | save | share at
which included creating a temporary school to
accommodate pupils while the new building was
being constructed.
“With limited opportunities for expansion, the
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea con-
cluded the original Victorian School was no longer
capable of supporting their needs. In addition to
facilities for a larger two-form-entry school requiring
over 2500m 2 of playgrounds, the brief also called
for a new commercial building for office and retail,
and a pedestrian link to be provided across the
site,” says Jolly.
“The challenge was, therefore, how to achieve
this significant increase in density across the con-
fined urban site whilst creating a fitting replacement
for the original Victorian school.”
Added to this were the constraints posed by a