This is another recognised primary school in Hampshire – Velmead Road, Fleet.On the outskirts of the small town of Fleet in Hampshire, it is sheltered by a narrow belt of pine trees to the north and looks out to the south onto woodlands across a narrow tract of sandy heathland.This school was built in the 1980s and the building designed by Michael Hopkins and Partners.The Education Department was keen on them to apply their favourite Teflon-coated fabric technology, later deployed successfully in the Mound Stand at Lord’s and the practice responded with an elegant and incisive analysis which resulted in a sea of translucent fabric beneath which the accommodation would be housed in a rectangular, glazed envelope (Fig. 19) which could open up to allow the classes to migrate when the weather is fine.The hall/gym, music/drama room, kitchen and administration areas are on the north side of the circulation route with its shared use niches.The central entrance opens onto a library area, while the administration, kitchen and toilets are in enclosed cellular pods.
The form of the school building has a low-angle, pitched, profiled sheet steel roof rising to a continuous central barrel-shaped polycarbonate roof light.On the north and south facades, it has a full double glazed height, and a concrete slab with underfloor heating.(Fig. 20).
Despite support for the project, the proposal proved too much for the Education Committee to take, behind the scenes they were strongly encouraged to reject the scheme by the education officers who were not convinced by the idea in principle and the main concern was that the projected 20 – 25 years’ life of the fabric would cause financial problems when it needs to be replaced, no matter how much cheaper it might be initially compared with a conventional roof.
The rejection of the fabric roof did not stop the scheme continuing.It acquired a flattened-out metal version of the familiar “barn” roof and a lighting space or spine and as Stansfield explains: –
The result is architecturally impure – the spine (or ‘street’ as the Hampshire architects like to term such spaces) is over-emphasised; its linearity at odds with the patterns of entrance and use – and the lack of attention to energy conservation and spatial uniformity due to the minimum 3.2 metre height determined by the hall are open to criticism – Stansfield (1).
The Fleet Infants’ School was voted the best primary school building in Britain alongside the Queen’s Enclosure First School Cowplain.It was awarded the R.I.B.A. architecture aware in 1988 with the result as the regional and national winner.
The Queen’s Enclosure School at Cowplain (Fig. 21) which was completed in 1989 and was awarded the R.I.B.A.’s 1970 Building of the Year Award, is a direct development of the Fleet School plan which looks exactly the same apart from the facade where the changes were made.The Project Architect of this school had prepared a timber-based design, but when it became apparent that this was going to be too costly, he was faced with a complete re-design with only a few days before an important deadline.Hence the changes in the buildings facade to the original Hopkin design.
The external stretched fabric of the Fleet School on the south side protects the glazing from solar gain in summer. Ridge vents, which are in the rooftlight, are opened automatically by thermostat or can be opened by a switch and are intended to general natural ventilation for the 10 metre deep classrooms. The building has relatively low thermal mass in which to store solar panels and has a polythene pipe hot water under the floor hence the underground heating.There is a report, which explains that although the building has awards under its belt, overheating happens in the Spring and Autumn. There are places in the building, which needed the aid of mechanical ventilation:such places are the kitchen and toilets.The same applies to the lighting system in the building where it had to rely on electric lighting in such small areas.
The actual average primary energy consumption was recorded as 256 Kwh/m2 (corrected for regional difference)
The energy use is high when compared with figures for other well known modern Hampshire designed schools.The ventilation loss accounts for 41% of the empty use, as shown by the diagram in Fig. 22.This may be due to the use of louvre-type window vents, which are notoriously leaky and were replaced in many London schools, partly for this reason.
Energy and Building Statistics
Actual annual primary energy consumption (corrected for regional differences but not to the 20 year degree – day average and adjusted to exclude catering – 256 Kwh/m2.
Gross floor area – 1188m2
Number of pupil places – 315
Number on roll- 220
Building Net cost (BNC)- £651,674excluding external works
External works- £74,674
Base Date -2nd Quarter 1987
BNC/Gross floor area- £548.62/m2
Completed in -December 1986
Energy and Building Statistics, Architects Dept., Essex County Council (2)
It should be noted that unlike the traditional “chalk and talk” technique of teaching, this primary school is based around small group working and the spacious interior of the school provides an ideal setting for the varied activities in which the children engage. With the advent of the National Curriculum, these are set to become even more varied and learning rather than formal teaching will depend on group and individual working using a range of educational resources.
In response to these new demands, it was decided to re-organise the school around subjects/activities rather than the normal age-defined classes and it is credit to the design that it can accommodate such change far more effectively than would be possible in a traditional school with cellular classrooms.
There is, however, always the danger that those variations can become ends in themselves, not necessary in the work of Hopkins & Partners but in works of the Hampshire Council as a whole. One can detect slight signs of this in some of their recent work. The “Barn” at Four Lanes, Chineham, has an over-worked entrance canopy, which is far too high to keep off the rain and lacks the spatial magic internally of its predecessor.
Similarly, the new Junior School at Hatch Warren, although formally elegant also feels somewhat over the top and and has poor quality of light.In the light of the office’s remarkable achievements, these might seem like minor matters but the tendency of new staff to want to outdo an office’s previous successes is quite understandable and needs to be closely monitored if architectural rigour and vitality are to be maintained.Even though the heyday of primary school building is almost over, the Fleet Infants School would be the last Hampshire built school chosen for this dissertation and the future will bring new challenges, which should keep Hampshire on the architectural map.
Little, if any, critical writing appears to have been written about Michael Hopkins & Partners. The majority of his work and other well-recognised architectural firms seemed to avoid school buildings. Fosters and Partners are said to have designed only one school building – The School for Children with Special Needs while Hopkins only school building is the one chosen for the 1980s school, which won the R.I.B.A. award as the best school building for the year.
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