Edith Neville Primary School

The re-building of Edith Neville Primary School forms the first phase of Camden’s new £89m Central Somers Town regeneration masterplan. Located between St. Pancras station, the Crick Institute and Euston station, Central Somers Town is a short walk from some of London’s busiest landmarks yet also one of its most deprived and neglected neighbourhoods. The regeneration initiative provides a re-built school, new public open spaces, community facilities and 130 new homes, making it a flagship for Camden Council’s Community Investment Programme (CIP) and a key milestone in redressing the historic inequality of the area.

The School had been housed in sub-standard accommodation since its opening in the 1970s. It’s new home includes a 1-to-2FE primary school, nursery, family centre and parent drop-in, providing pupils with a state-of-the-art learning environment and the school a secure basis on which it can thrive into the future. The resultant building is a welcoming and light-filled celebration of the school community and its pupils’ work. This has been carefully configured to suit the historic context and implementation of the wider masterplan, achieved whilst the school remained operation on the constrained site throughout construction.

A Manifesto for Learning

The building design is based on a shared ‘manifesto’, specific to Edith Neville Primary School. This manifesto evolved from the detailed consultation conversations undertaken between Hayhurst and Co, the school community and the local authority, establishing the project’s key objectives and a vision for the identity of the educational environment. The manifesto covered subjects such as ‘pedagogy’, ‘nature’, ‘community’ and ‘well-being’: defining and expressing of the school’s ethos and community outlook.

Family Scale and Community Connection

The school is pivotal to the Central Somers Town community, allowing essential social interaction for many parents and providing the opportunity for the school to engage with the wider family unit. The design of the new building was developed around the idea of a family-scale courtyard ‘oasis’, which welcomes families into the heart of the building. This provides parents with access to its various facilities, whilst also accommodating pick-up and drop-off of multiple siblings simultaneously.

A landscape setting

The new school is conceived as part of the surrounding parkland landscape and its building and boundary are designed to extend the park, both physically and perceptively. The white, filigree site enclosure and building envelope provide a multi-layered backdrop to the public spaces they face. Planting is strategically placed to grow up and through the façade, creating pieces of vertical park, whilst carefully considered openings through the bespoke perforate fencing allow visual permeability without compromise to the school’s sense of protection.

‘The proposal for the school building, external spaces and the site perimeter is a highly bespoke design that responds to a complex and challenging brief. The proposed design is a contextually sensitive and innovative response to the design concept of a school as an extension of its parkland setting that uses both building and boundary treatments as a foil to the landscape. The layered façade provides depth to the elevations and supports the concept of the site and building as an extension to the park landscape.’ (LB Camden Planning Officer)

Learning Environments

The new school is designed to promote inclusive external play and provide inside and outside spaces that enrich pupil’s health and wellbeing, as well as the formal curriculum. Beyond the classroom, this includes internal and external group break-out spaces, directly accessible from every class base, creating opportunities for different forms and scales of teaching, learning and experimentation.

This approach continues in playground areas, which have been specifically tailored to support each and every pupil by providing a variety of landscapes types, encouraging alternative modes of social interaction and by nurturing those with less confidence, as well as providing space for more active, physical play. The external spaces include a country garden, a potting shed and fallen logs for informal play.

School as Gallery

Every space in the school is used as a learning opportunity and is utilised for educational benefit. Circulation is therefore never simply for moving through, but doubles-up as break-out, display or as a parent engagement tool. The main route between the entrance and the hall was widened to become a ‘gallery’ for large-

scale hanging artwork and parents to mingle in the heart of the building. Similarly, classroom storage walls are punctured to create a ‘shopfront window’ for each class to present their work, and windows and rooflights mediate long and short views to make teaching spaces feel part of the extended landscape and wider city.

Awards
RIBA National Award 2023 – Winner
RIBA Award 2023 – Winner
Building Awards, Delivering Social Value 2020 – Winner 
London Planning Awards 2018 – Winner
National Urban Design Awards 2019 – Finalist
NLA Awards 2017 – Finalist