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Stowe School – Design, Technology and Engineering Building

Stowe, Buckinghamshire

º£½ÇÊÓƵ supported Stowe School to transform its technical learning environment, with the development of a new Design, Technology & Engineering (DTE) building.

The historic Stowe School, based since its foundation in 1923 on the Stowe House estate, formerly the seat of the Dukes of Buckingham and Chandos, was severely in need of new DTE facilities. Its previous DTE block, which was built in the 1950s, comprised of three cramped and overcrowded workshops, with separate mobile cabins serving as classrooms, while storage of larger pieces of project work was always challenging.

The new Design, Technology & Engineering building for Stowe School features a low-carbon timber structure.

The new facilities increases the number, size and quality of the workshops and classrooms, with 1,000m² of learning space (compared to 683m²).

The timber and MEP infrastructure is left largely exposed to act as a teaching tool, with all services colour-coded and carefully laid out in view.

The sustainability and circularity of the structure is further enhanced by the use of helical steel screw pile foundations.

Challenge

Following an invited design competition, architect Design Engine was commissioned to develop designs for the new building. º£½ÇÊÓƵ was engaged to provide insight and design expertise around structural engineering, geotechnical engineering, infrastructure, sustainability and building services (MEP) advice up to RIBA Stage 3.

The brief asked for a new stand-alone building that would replace the outdated facilities, to house state-of-the-art workshops and embrace developing thinking in all areas of design, technology and engineering. Siting a new building within the historic Stowe landscape would require careful consideration, to ensure minimal impact, with heritage and biodiversity key factors.

Stowe School also wanted to explore how the building itself could work as an educational tool, expressing how different materials are employed in contemporary architecture and structural engineering and to reveal the inner workings of the building’s infrastructure and utilities.

Another key challenge was ensuring the learning space was maximised on what was still a reasonably constrained plot, surrounded by woodland.

Solution

The new two-storey facilities have increased the number, size and quality of the workshops and classrooms, with 1,000m² of learning space (compared the current 683m² facility). There are distinct ‘designing spaces’ and ‘making spaces’, a dedicated area for teaching and learning resources, adequate storage for materials and large-scale projects and an exhibition space to showcase the most interesting and innovative work.

Consideration of how the building is made has led the design team to explore two key threads: structural embodied carbon and the whole project lifecycle (including the potential for recycling materials at its eventual deconstruction). Consequently, the project utilises an all-timber glulam and cross-laminated timber (CLT) design for the superstructure – an approach that significantly reduces the embodied carbon intensity of the building.

The timber is largely exposed internally to act as a teaching tool, in order to celebrate the material and construction and give a robust through-thickness finish that requires minimum maintenance. The exposed timber works in harmony with the woodland outside to promote a learning environment rich in calm biophilic stimuli. All soffit-mounted building services distribution is carefully laid out and colour-coded, allowing students to observe, trace and understand the infrastructure.

As well as not requiring the highly carbon-intensive manufacturing processes of steel and concrete, timber – in its first lifecycle as a tree – actively consumes CO₂ from the atmosphere. Consequently, timber sourced from sustainable forests can provide a highly sustainable method of storing carbon for the lifetime of the building elements. The timber can also be easily disassembled and reused at the end of the building’s lifecycle.

The substructure requires some use of cast in-situ concrete on a grillage of suspended steel ground beams. The design was required to respond to a number of requirements, including possible ground heave, but was optimised to minimise material use and to further facilitate simple deconstruction should the building ever need to be repurposed, or the site restored to landscape in the future.

The sustainability of the structure is further enhanced by the use of helical steel screw pile foundations. Unlike concrete piles, these large screw-like elements are removeable, meaning that they could be ‘un-screwed’ from the ground and recycled at the building’s end of life, as well as significantly minimising the materiality of the foundations structure. The low carbon MEP plant and infrastructure includes the integration of air source heat pumps to minimise the building’s operational carbon intensity.

Value

Stowe School is keen to be seen as the ‘go-to’ destination for budding engineers, designers and architects, fusing creativity and technological innovation to maintain its enviable reputation as a school that encourages individuals to develop their unique talents. Stowe has established itself as the country’s leading school for robotics and this new facility will embrace developing technology in mechatronics, computer-aided design, computer-aided manufacturing, computer-aided engineering, 3D printing and other cutting-edge technology.

º£½ÇÊÓƵ’s multidisciplinary team of engineers designed and delivered a solution which matches the high aspirations of the teaching staff and students. In so-doing they helped to shape and develop a carefully considered design that puts sustainability and low-carbon materiality at its core.

We delivered detailed embodied carbon accounting from the earliest stages and tracked it over design development to ensure that design decisions were made with embodied carbon as one of the key parameters.