We’re still slightly reeling from the speech given by Steve Chalke tonight at the BCSE Industry Awards. We knew he was worth hearing – we wouldn’t have asked him to speak otherwise – but if we’d anticipated just how powerful his message was going to be … well, you’d be watching a YouTube of it [...]
Posts under ‘BCSE / C4SD activities’
Buildings that embrace the nature of learning in the 21st century
Money may be tight right now, but there is a huge amount that we can learn from the decisions that were made over the past decade of investment in school building capital project. In preparing for the BCSE 2010 Industry Awards tomorrow night, I was reviewing some of the 2009 winners to see how they [...]
Remodelling education – key lessons from history
Yesterday’s launch event of our new resource ‘The New 3Rs’ threw up some really interesting observations from the presenters about the new landscape we are working within – and some radical options for the future of schools and school design. Interestingly many of these had their roots in the history of schooling and identify a [...]
The New 3 Rs – refresh, refurb & reusing schools
We’ve just published a report entitled ‘Rethinking schools capital investment: the new 3Rs? – Refresh, refurb, reuse. We’re loading the whole thing up as a permanent section to this site and you can download it here (pdf). It has been produced in conjunction with Scott Brownrigg and Davis Langdon. The New 3Rs – refresh, refurbishment [...]
Award winning refurb
One of the most impressive refurbishments of an existing school that we’ve seen in recent years was the job that Haverstock did on the Ifield School in Gravesend, Kent. It was deservedly a joint-winner of the 2009 BCSE Awards, providing an example of how to really implement a new extension, remodel and refurbishment to an [...]
Sustainability in action
Bowbridge Primary in Notts was the winner of BCSE’s ‘Greening the School’ industry award in 2009. As the ‘Zero Carbon Task Force’ seems a distant memory, it is worth remembering what Bowbridge stood out for. The school’s staff and community were involved right from the start of this project so that the new extension could [...]
Every Special School Matters
Following our call for ideas – I am posting up some great case studies and discussions we had about designing special schools. As a major issue for the new government, special schools are very much here to stay – but their design and work is not always given the same profile and visibility way as [...]
What you may have missed in May
With so much to look forward to in June (National School Environments Week 18-25 June and the BCSE Industry Awards 24 June), we thought we’d make sure that you haven’t missed any of the important developments we picked up in May. It all seems so long ago now, but a month ago, we weren’t entirely [...]
Remodelling education spaces
For obvious reasons, we’ve been getting a lot of interest around the question of school refurbishment and remodelling in recent weeks. It’s an area that we’ve covered in a number of ways over the past year or so. Our major remodelling conference in March 2009 featured some of the best case studies and presentations available in England. [...]
School furniture and ergonomics – what matters?
In our second podcast I talk to world renowned ergonomics guru Dr Dieter Breithecker about his expert views on school furniture and the key messages he has for schools and professionals working in the UK. Dieter has run the Federal Institute for the Development of Posture and Exercise in Germany for the past 20 years. [...]
