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Architects: Mitchell Taylor Workshop
- Area: 1909 m²
- Year: 2008
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Photographs:Edmund Sumner
Text description provided by the architects. The Scheme was for a new 94 bed boarding house for Badminton School, Bristol. Badminton is one of the foremost girl’s schools in the country and they wanted a forward looking building to provide new accommodation for the girls and house staff.
The building covers three storeys and is largely wrapped at the upper levels in an un-treated Larch cladding skin above a brick base that dissolves into the ground plane and the surrounding landscape. The building has a very efficient use of space to provide the accommodation and then the building is broken along its length to form the central circulation and social areas which flood the centre of the building with light and ventilation and to expand the views across the Avon valley behind.
The building is a high performing design with sustainability at the core of the client brief. The envelope is a super-insulated steel stud frame with lightweight partitions and thermally massive floors. The spaces are naturally ventilated throughout and designed for natural light to all spaces. What heating the building needs is provided by a Combined Heat and Power plant unit that also produces electricity to be used for the building and the wider School.
