St Mary Redcliffe
and Temple school

St Mary Redcliffe and Temple school is in central Bristol and the north side of the site links to St Mary Redcliffe Church. It is the only Church of England voluntary aided secondary school in Bristol and in the Diocese. The school has always been very popular and is over-subscribed, with students drawn from a wide variety of social and economic backgrounds across the city.

Vision

The school’s vision and objectives can be expressed through the phrase ‘A Christian school at the heart of the city’. This reflects both the geographical location and the school’s unique status in the city and wider area.

The school want the BSF outcomes to be support for empowered learning. and the scheme proposals are for a united building and school community that is integrated into, and interacts with, the wider community.

Facts & figures

The project, costing £1,753.00 per m², consists of a mixture of refurbishment of existing blocks and construction of new areas, with external works of £46.00 per m² and services works of £267.00 per m².

The total area of the site is 2.0283 hectares: the gross floor area of the new development will be 12,195 m² with 6542.9 m² of internal teaching space, 1947.6 m² of circulation areas and 347.8 m² provided for storage.

The site

The current school buildings sit in an area of high rise residential blocks and are a mixture of 1960s tower block construction with varying levels, a single-storey extension for the Technology department and two more recent buildings of 1980s and 1990s construction. The two latter buildings are remote from the main block, causing problems with access and communication.

The main block has been diagnosed with concrete cancer and will be demolished. The buildings have very tight and constrained circulation routes, limiting the movement of students around the school, and there are no social areas and very limited play areas for students. The inadequacy of existing provision has been flagged up in Ofsted inspections and as numbers have grown in response to the school’s success, the buildings have become an increasingly limiting factor.

Design

The scheme has been developed with the aim of creating faculty areas and optimising the use of space on site with the use of height as a device for mitigating the cramped conditions.

The design solution involves the retention of existing swimming pool, gym, main hall, and dining and kitchen facilities with the front façade of these facilities being re-clad. The Temple Colston building will be retained to provide the classroom bases for humanities and drama overspill.

The new build areas are envisaged to be wrapped around existing retained facilities to achieve a new arrival and identity for the school, with maximisation of social spaces for students and internal re-organisation to achieve stronger faculty and department links.

An adaptable worship/performance space is desired to reflect both the Christian nature of the school and allow for achievement through performance. A sports hall is also required to address the current lack of routine provision for PE as off-site playing fields are used for PE activities.

The new build, consisting of four storeys, will be built 11 metres away from existing facilities, but connected to it via an unheated but covered ‘street’. The street will be fully enclosed and will become an interactive social space for the school itself.

The new accommodation screens and encloses the existing buildings and creates a totally new façade to Somerset Square. The lower ground floor will house existing facilities plus a library, Design Technology and SEN/Behavioural Management, together with the main student reception areas.

The upper ground floor houses a main reception, access to the main halls for community use, Music, Drama, English and ICT bases. The first floor houses Science while the second floor accommodates Art, Maths, staff and administration.

New pedestrian accesses are created via a bridge from Somerset Square to the upper ground floor for visitors and a new student entrance on the lower ground floor.

The landscape design responds to the urban setting of the site and opens up a landscape link through the school, providing an exciting setting to the new school buildings. The proposals provide an attractive and exciting series of inter-connected spaces that offer opportunities for teaching and attractive areas for social interaction.

The existing wildlife garden has been relocated between the main new building and sports hall, close to the Clarence Road frontage. A new hard court area will be formed adjacent to the Temple Colston building and the existing cricket nets relocated into the Sports hall.

Community use

About 80% of the school grounds (multi-games area and basketball pitches) and approximately 25% of the school buildings (sports and associated changing facilities, main performance hall, gym and lower dining hall areas) are intended to be made available for community use.

Low-impact design features

The following are utilised as far as is practicable within the new build and refurbished areas:

• Optimised building form and orientation to maximise solar access and daylight, with effective solar protection to avoid solar overheating and glare.
• High-efficient compact florescent luminaires and automatic lighting controls to switch off lights where not needed.
• A high-performance thermal envelope to guarantee high levels of air tightness.
• Passive/ natural ventilation where possible, exposed mass to provide passive cooling and avoid the need for air-conditioning and controlled mechanical ventilation (with recovery).
• Variable speed drives in air handling units to improve part-load performance and high-efficiency fans.
• Heat recovery in the primary ventilation air plant and centralised heating systems, with variable speed pumps to improve part load performance.
  Separate heating zones to allow heating to be individually controlled and/or switched off when required.
• A careful consideration of available heating options has resulted in woodchip biomass being proposed, as this technology is a renewable energy source, offers the best value for money and has the greatest potential for reducing the schools carbon emissions.
• Percussion taps on all showers and wash hand basins and low-volume WC flushes.
  

Predicted energy consumption

The predicted annual electricity consumption per m² of floor area is 63kWh and predicted fossil fuel consumption per m2 of floor is 108kWh. Predicted water use is 0.46m3 per m² of floor area (based on 0.017m3 per pupil per day).

Environmental, social and economic impacts

It is vital to have sound controls in place to manage common issues from construction, such as dust, noise, run-off, light pollution, hydrocarbon contamination and increased transport. Skanska construction sites operate to the highest standards of environmental good practice, but each site also has strong links with its ‘host’ school and through them, the wider community, in order to ensure that any issues or concerns arising from site operations can be resolved quickly and effectively.

Significant opportunities exist in construction to improve waste management and ’resource efficiency’. Deliveries of materials are organised to arrive ‘just in time’ wherever possible to minimise waste produced, and all waste materials are segregated and recycled wherever possible. As an example, the piling mats have been constructed from excavated material derived from site. Closed unit paint washout stations are used on the Bristol sites to prevent paint escaping into surface water run-off.

Skanska have a commitment to strengthening the local labour pool in areas where construction projects are ongoing, both in terms of numbers employed and providing training. The company have stringent targets for employing local labour on their schools projects – this figure is currently 70%. In addition, Skanska actively encourage their supply chain to offer apprenticeship schemes to young people, and regularly attend school careers fairs to promote the construction industry as a career choice.

Skanska have a longstanding partnership with Remploy who are the UK’s leading employer of disabled people. Remploy factories supply all the Bristol projects with fixed furniture and equipment, which means that the schools are contributing to social and economic sustainability for the region.