Eveline Lowe Primary School,
Marlborough Grove, Bermondsey

The subject of an RIBA competition, the School is currently housed in a 1967 Grade 2 listed building and an Edwardian block on a spilt site. The brief for the competition was to expand and modernise the School to create a 21st Century school that respects the design philosophy of the original with its innovative open plan teaching arrangement. The project forms part of the first wave of primary school funding for Southwark’s ‘Schools for the Future’ programme.

The competition winning scheme places new classrooms in pods around the external boundary of the site, leaving the listed school buildings refurbished and intact. Each pod is constructed using a steel frame that can easily be erected from the road side, as the school must remain in operation during the whole construction period. The open plan concept has been maintained in the new buildings, with carefully chosen materials to provide passive control of the thermal and acoustic environments.

The project will be completed at Easter 2011

Architect HKR Architects and John Pardey Architects