Belvidere Secondary School

Delivered via the new School Replacement Programme (SRP), this school is required to meet the new DfE Sustainability Annex, which targets Net Zero Carbon in-use by 2050, and embodied carbon assessments at RIBA stages 4 and 6.

Stride Treglown has been appointed to design and deliver this scheme for the Department for Education. The brief is a 900 place secondary school, ages 11-16, with additional SEN classrooms and facilities.

A new school building for Belvidere Secondary School will house all accommodation under one roof, adjacent to the retained existing Sports Hall. The new build will be on part of the current playing fields with the existing school continuing to operate throughout the duration of construction. Following completion of the new build, the existing will be demolished and this portion of the site will be turned into a new car park and additional playing fields.

The layout of the building and the site was developed through stakeholder consultation with the school. The school’s logo is the existing Cedar tree, this is now the focal point of the school. The location of the new site allows for views over local landscape with historic significance, as such the majority of classrooms have access to these views as a teaching device. The school have a lot of community use and the layout was designed to provide secure spaces that could be used out-of-hours without needing to open up the whole building.

The school also has a high number of EHCP (Education, Health and Care Plan) students for which the new building provides additionally resourced SEN (Special Educational Needs) accommodation. These are integrated within the main building but have the ability to be a private suite of spaces if required.

The proposed building is a three storey L-shaped solution. The orientation aims to minimise the effects of prevailing winds on the external landscaped area, provide the required daylighting levels internally and allow the PVs to maximise their orientation towards the sun.

In order to meet the sustainability requirements, the design promotes a passive approach with stack ventilation chimneys providing natural cross ventilation to the majority of general teaching spaces.

The building fabric is optimised – insulation levels are increased to improve on standard U-values and modular components have been developed to minimise thermal bridges.

Energy is produced from PV arrays – these are on the roof of the new building and on external canopies integrated into the landscape that also serve as shelters for students for dining and recreation. Air source heat pumps will also assist the heating of domestic hot water.

The combination of these strategies will ensure the building is lower energy in-use and requires less offsetting of renewables to balance the carbon.

The planning application was submitted in May 2021. The school is being delivered on the DfE’s MMC Framework using off-site methods.