Back to school for architecture students

A TEAM of seven first year architecture students have constructed their winning design for the “entrance experience” project at the under-construction new school building for St. Ambrose Barlow RC High School, in Salford.

The live project was to design an installation for the three-storey entrance space, which ran as a competition for the whole year group. From a total of 175 proposals, a long list of 24 entries were further developed within the 12 studio groups, which was then whittled down to a short list of six to be re-presented to a panel from St. Ambrose School and the Manchester School of Architecture.

The head teacher and the Chair of Governors from the school chose the winning design to the delight of Nasra Ali, Alicia Booth, Abbey Costello, James Flanagan, Ryan Millar, Louis Speelmans and Adrian Wong who then developed and finalised the project a little further with the school and the contractor Laing O’Rourke.

Elegant

Helen Aston said: “As Head of Year One, I wanted the students to undertake a competitive design project within their first term of first year, where all of the Year One students also had the chance to visit a large construction site.

“But for the winning group, the prize was to learn to further negotiate their ideas and concepts, finalise the details with the contractor, and eventually manufacture the installation in our workshops.”

The polypropelene letters make up the mission statement of the school, and hang as twelve clusters, rising gently and elegantly through the entrance space.