HEART SPACE
The cafe area blends with a double-height volume at
the centre of the building, which sits behind the front
door, and provides a visual connection between the
ground and first floorcontractor. Fairham says that, at least in his
BDP Bristol office, this procurement
method isn’t particularly popular with
builders, and the fact that there was
“a lot of interest” illustrates how attractive
this project was. He adds that this was
also down to the “resolution of the
design information.”
Following Rydon’s appointment, Fairham
says briefing with the client was a “pretty
straightforward” process of identifying key
areas of interest: “We nailed down the bits
that were really important to the client
and the local community, and with other
buildability and construction aspects we left
more flexibility for the contractor to come
up with best practice.” The £9.1m
build cost was set early on following
optioneering, and the project coming in on
budget “offered a lot of bang for buck,”
says Fairham.
Form
From early dialogue with the client, it was
clear they wanted the building to have “a
special character,” says Fairham. The
masterplan includes an avenue which runs
parallel to the site to a large green open
space to the north, and the new building is
a landmark for anyone travelling north-
south – or east-west – across the site.
During the optioneering phase, BDP
developed one option called the ‘Beacon,’
which as the name suggests, stood out from
the others. It took the material palette of
the new Mulberry Park in terms of the
brick used (albeit in a more restrained and
Bath Stone-like creamy variant), and
combined it with a dynamic cantilevering
form which would make it a focal point.
The building’s steel frame cantilevers to
the side at second level, and double-
cantilevers front-to-back at third. The
resulting composition of stacked boxes
overlapping and appearing to ‘slot’ into
each other was directly inspired by the
site’s heritage. “The concept is effectively a
stack of Mulberry Harbours,” says
Fairham, adding that the practice had
“really positive feedback about it” from
the local community.
Planning was granted under a ‘delegated
approval’ – “a rarity in Bath,” says
Fairham. He says that achieving the right
balance in terms of proportion, while
adhering to height constraints for planning,
“reinforced the stacking concept” which
the architects adopted.
The community centre and nursery are
offset from the school by about two metres
at the request of the academy that runs the
school, and so the development effectively
forms two separate buildings. They were
designed as a unified entity by BDP
however, and as such are linked by a
continuation of the roof terrace that runs
along the front elevation. The top storey’s
cantilever extends to around 5 metres at
the back, and covers a portion of a larger
roof terrace, providing protected outdoor
space for wellness classes. To the rear of the
Community Hub is a 4G pitch, the fruit
from a close relationship between the client
and the nearby Combe Down rugby club,
and a variety of sports activities can be
viewed from the rear roof terrace.
As part of the “long-life, loose-fit, simple
maintenance” approach by the architects,
the Hub has an exposed steel frame and
exposed precast soffits, plus acoustic
panels internally to increase the spaces’
usability. The soffits assist night time
purging of heat, and underfloor heating
throughout also helps to maximise the
thermal mass of the slab.
One way in which the two buildings are
unified is by the use of a copper alloy
cladding, which has a bronze-gold colour
and is perforated in a pattern based on
aerial photography of the Mulberry
Harbours. It creates an attractive variation
to the exterior, enclosing the cantilevered,
overlapping third storey, but also the
school hall – which bookends the other
side of a new public space formed in frontPROJECT REPORT: MIXED USE SCHEMES 33ADF JUNE 2019 WWW.ARCHITECTSDATAFILE.CO.UK