Sennockian 2017-2018 | Page 14

©Hélène Binet
P laces and Spaces
the Library at opposite ends, Technology and Science alongside and
opposite the Performing and Visual Arts. At one end, a new concept
– the Global Study Centre, designed to inspire the outward-facing
ambition of our educational programme.
A quadrangle which might allow the artist to explore the chemistry
of pigment, the physicist to find musical expression through
vibration, the life scientist to explore biophysics, the industrial
designer, or indeed, architect, to experiment with form and function.
A quadrangle for recreation, conversation, contemplation. Spaces
– indoor and outdoor – to encourage and nurture the values at
our core: open-minded enquiry, curiosity, creativity, knowledge,
understanding, and the perspective that can thrive in our diverse,
global, multilingual community.
The built and natural environments of Sevenoaks School
In 1961, my father Paul Koralek, then a young graduate from
London’s school of architecture, the AA, won, at the age of 27, an
international competition to design the Berkeley Library at Trinity
College Dublin. He was working in New York at the time, for the
Bauhaus architect Marcel Breuer.
My dad remembers in a recent interview, ‘...I first came over to
receive the prize...incidentally with a few-months-old baby, which
I had overlooked to mention to the college...’ I don’t remember this
at all, not surprisingly, as I was that baby.
Someone asked me at an architectural event a little while ago how
I had managed to escape architecture. I replied that I hadn’t really.
Though of course not an architect, some considerable – and very
stimulating and exciting – portion of my role as Head of Sevenoaks
involves working with architects.
I am sure the early influences growing up with an architect have
played a part in developing a vision for our campus. A childhood
8
that involved touring the Gothic cathedrals of France, and deserted
monasteries in Ireland; hearing about sites and buildings from
Jerusalem to Basildon, from Oxford to Offaly – these things were
part of our family life.
So when I arrived here in 2002, to be greeted with the question,
‘Shall we put an extension on Claridge House to make room for
the photocopier?’ something told me that this was not the right
question. What followed was a tour of our site with my father as
adviser. He showed us immediately the oddity of the Flat – a car
park – at the heart of the school! By 2005, we had employed Tim
Ronalds Architects to design a masterplan for the site – a blueprint
for development that would consider our full educational needs and
aspirations, and devise a sequenced plan to meet them.
So here we are in 2018, on the verge of completing what is in effect
a new quadrangle for the school, made up of several of the elements
central to the liberal education we offer – Physical Education and
ACADEMIC REVIEW
My father always says that great architecture is the product of
collaboration between architect and client. That is certainly my
experience here. Perhaps what has made us good clients is the
fact that we share a clear vision of the experience we want for our
students, and indeed all who teach or work at Sevenoaks School –
one of free, imaginative and open debate, of the joy of discovery, of
harmonious and purposeful interaction with friends and colleagues,
of the shared pursuit of truth, the delight of our co-curriculum, the
growth of inner resources for a balanced and fulfilling life. But we
also recognise we might not know exactly what we want, and that
we certainly don’t know how to translate these abstract desires and
concepts into places and spaces.
What makes an architect great to work with is the ability to listen
and observe, to see beyond the client’s articulation of the brief, and
to elicit possibilities unthought of until that collaboration takes
place. The ability to try out ideas, reject and change them,
to be responsive and thoughtful to changing and
evolving needs.
And the buildings themselves? Invested with light and form,
generosity of proportion, quality of materials (the bricks
handmade in the Forest of Dean, echoing the tone of Kentish
ragstone), and quality of workmanship. Places enabling our students,
teachers and staff to meet and intersect in inspiring spaces, to do
things in new ways.
In The Buildings of England: West Kent and the Weald (1980) the
architectural historians Nikolaus Pevsner and John Newman are
sniffy about pretty much all of the school’s architecture: ‘Modern
buildings, none of them noteworthy, behind’. Not what the next
edition will truthfully be able to record.
Katy Ricks
SEVENOAKS SCHOOL 2017-2018
9