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The Mountbatten School - Romsey
1200 no. pupils
A large secondary school with significant community use, situated on an extensive site, located on the edge of a residential area.
The schools initial information gathering involved an evaluation of the lunch break period. This showed that pupils valued their long lunch break, however it revealed that the majority of pupils were choosing to stay in their form rooms: 68% (820 no) identified it as their ‘favourite place’. Staff expressed concern about the social and educational consequences of large numbers of pupils choosing to stay inside.
An evaluation of the outdoor spaces gave some clues about why this might be happening:
Firstly, the school had a large site but the design, use and management of the space was limiting opportunities. Many spaces were designated as ‘no go’ areas, other parts of the site could only be used for sport. Spaces developed solely for social and break-time use were small, limited in number and of poor quality in terms of location, micro-climate and design. In addition, it was noted that the car parking needs of the school had meant that cars infiltrated some of the key spaces between the buildings.
Evaluation revealed one particular key space as an area of opportunity.
This was in a centrally located part of the site, close to the buildings and so potentially easy to supervise and access. The designated use of the space was as a car park, however, being next to a number of food serving points it was used informally by pupils as an outdoor eating space. It was also used throughout the day as a main route way for pupils moving between different buildings during lesson change-over.
In terms of its climate it was also one of the few sheltered spaces on the site.
Changes to this key space became an important part of the whole site strategy.
Within this area the strategy set out the need to review the presence of vehicles,. This would involve management changes for kitchen deliveries and the relocation of parking on the site to a less central area, where its presence would not impinge upon the quality of the environment and its potential enjoyment by site users.
The area released by moving the parking was identified as a space for social and recreational use during break and lunchtimes, as an area for eating outdoors and as
a gathering space for various school and community events.
The action plan for implementing the strategy identified this space as the initial priority. Working with the Schools Landscape Programme a design brief was prepared and, with ongoing support from the County’s Property, Business and Regulatory Services Department, funding and appropriate advice was secured which enabled the project to be implemented.
The detailed design takes language as its underlying design theme to reflect the schools specialist ‘language college’ status. Pupils continued to be closely involved in the process by having a creative input into the design of particular features which included decorative screens, shelters, seating, and innovative ‘talk tables’. Each ‘talk table’ has a series of mouth pieces connected by tubes underground. This arrangement provides an engaging opportunity for pupils to speak to each other between shelters, whilst the table itself is designed to form a sculptural feature within each shelter. In addition, each table incorporates speakers linked to a powerful radio receiver and amplifier located within an adjacent store, thus enabling European language stations to be broadcast or the space filled with music.
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