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Project: Clapham Manor Primary School
Author: dRMM
Location: London, UK
Type: Education
Client: London Borough of Lambeth
Gross Internal Area: 927 m2
Project Manager: Sprunt
Cost Consultant: Appleyard & Trew
Structural Engineer: Michael Hadi Associates
Services Engineer: Fulcrum Consulting
Acoustics: Fleming & Barron
Main Contractor: The Construction Partnership
Materials: Glass (transparent, coloured and fritted), concrete, plywood, acoustic plasterboard, terrazzo
Photography: Jonas Lencer, Philip Marsh

dRMM’s vibrant intervention into a Victorian Board School: this polychromatic extension inserted into a tight urban context offers the school a new identity, much-needed learning spaces and an organisational hub, while maximising play space.

Clapham Manor Primary School was a victim of its own success; pupil numbers had grown, placing pressure on the successful delivery of curriculum within the restrictions of the original building. The new wing is conceived as a freestanding addition that plugs into the 19th century Board School, allowing the school to work as a single entity. It is pulled off the flank wall to sit parallel with the neighbouring Odd Fellows Hall. The resultant interstitial space creates a formal entrance into the school, in which a transparent atrium separates new and old.

The facade is inspired by post-war system-built schools, utilising curtain walling to create bright and airy teaching spaces yet benefiting from current technological advances to control the environment. The formal grid that typically defines curtain walling is manipulated to provide a non-institutionalised expression, appropriate for a primary school. The building is wrapped in a pixellated loop of colour, and plays with the scale of its brick neighbours.

There are no corridors: triple aspect classrooms are connected by vibrant and stimulating informal spaces with visual transparency. By contrast, classrooms are muted and calm. The facade works hard: solid, fritted and clear panels provide environmental control, internal felt pinboards display children’s work, and changing compositions of the city are framed at heights to suit all ages.

Described as “boisterous polychromy” by Ellis Woodman of Building Design.

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