Planning permission has been granted to Waterbeach Community Primary School, which will increase its learning capacity to 630. The design, by Saunders Boston Architects, will also improve existing facilities, marking a step towards better education facilities for the local community.
The development will include a two-storey teaching block extension consisting of 12 classrooms, a group room, an improved and extended main entrance, and revised landscape and interior design.
Margherita Cesca, Senior Architect and Project Lead at Saunders Boston Architects, said: “We focussed on ensuring the design provided a sense of place for the students, and would help inspire creativity and enthusiasm in the learning environment. To achieve this, we have introduced a bold rainbow theme, which is sophisticatedly displayed in coloured glaze bricks inserted into light grey outer brickwork, with a series of seven coloured windows each representing one of the colours of the rainbow.”
Alongside the colourful exterior, there will be an inspirational ‘learning street’ designed to connect the classrooms and help students connect their thoughts between lessons.
When designing the school, Saunders Boston Architects, working alongside Kier Construction, used a number of technologies such as Building Information Modelling (BIM), virtual reality (VR), and architectural modelling to bring the designs to life. The use of such technology was also used to inspire a new generation of innovators in the building industry, who were invited to experiment and play with VR to visualise their dream school.