Collaboration with AHMM architects on the design of a new school in South London.
Client: Lambeth Council.
Architect: Allford Hall Monaghan Morris
Photo: Matt Chisnall
Awards: RSA Art For Architecture.
Acknowledgments: Paul Monaghan, Susie le Good, AHMM; Lizzie Tulip.
The Jubilee School in Tulse Hill was a project I was invited to engage with by Paul Monaghan of AHMM. We applied for, and received an award from the RSA. It was potentially an extremely attractive collaborative venture.
We were particularly keen to explore the use of flexible space and the blurring of the boundaries between the inner and outer spaces. Paul and Project Architect Susie Le Good were stimulating, open people to work with and I felt that strong ideas were being developed. We considered playground spaces, garden entrances, breakout classroom spaces, resolution of lobbies and the assembly hall. There wasn’t an obvious division of areas of intervention and, curiously, many of the light features were instigated by the architects, which I then co-developed with them.
As the building grew out of the site we would wander around the various levels of completion suggesting resolutions of differing areas including a large window at the end of an upstairs corridor, which had two layers of translucent film applied in a simple rectangular spiral that was somewhat offset to encourage the eye to move to the left where the corridor continued.
Many of our best intentions were somewhat diluted or proved impossible due to budgetary difficulties but overall the school has a wonderful sense of space and invention about it with exciting external spaces and adaptable internal ones. I am left with a feeling of an interesting and very worthwhile collaboration that has taken some studio formed ideas out into the world of everyday life.