Dining Hall, Colerne Primary School

The hall was designed to provide maximum space on a minimum budget, and was designed and constructed through a series of collaborative workshops held at the school with pupils as part of the design, client and construction team who even presented the project at planning committee.

Built entirely out of local timber in 4 months, the hall is superinsulated with large levels of natural daylight and ventilation and is designed to demonstrate how exemplar school buildings can be constructed on budgets close to £1000m².

The timber construction is a world first – the plywood and douglas fir flitch beams had never been used before and were designed by the architect as a cost effective way of spanning long distances in a lightweight and economical way.

A huge amount of thought has gone in to making the building perform – it was extensively thermally modelled to ensure optimum environmental conditions in summer and winter and to create as passively efficient building as possible, and also to achieve an acoustically moderated environment where the noise of 150 school children having lunch could be moderated.