RIBA Regional Awards 2014: South West / Wessex
The Lee Building, Ralph Allen School
Feilden Fowles Architects with Feilden Clegg Bradley Studio for Bath and North East Somerset Council/Ralph Allen School
Contract £1.42m. GIA 640m2
A former star pupil designed this new sixth form block, the Lee Building. Formed completely of cross-laminated timber panels, it is clad externally in sweet chestnut giving a warm domesticity to otherwise institutional spaces. A rammed earth wall separating two educational spaces makes its presence felt internally.
The intelligent and well-planned building is popular not just with the sixth formers but with all the pupils – and parents. On the front of the campus, it is the new public face for the school, facing a new courtyard and a building by the same architect. Creating a new heart for this educational facility, it is ‘a great example of exactly what schools should be commissioning’.