New Model Designs for Schools

Project Insight

Cullinan Studio led a consultant design team in the delivery of the Department for Education (DfE) New Model Designs for Schools. The New Model Designs (NMD) are three typical schools which are adaptable to meet any given school typology and provision requirements, including responding to site specific landscape considerations.

The designs put health and wellbeing at the forefront of school design enabling young people to have the opportunity they deserve: to live well and learn well; this will include, better air quality indoors and out with natural ventilation solutions, increased circulation to let the school and children breathe with relaxed internal and external dining. Generous covered walkways and a robust landscape design strategy ensure an increased access to nature and priority for social spaces for pupils and staff.

These standard school design solutions demonstrate the Department’s approach to customisable standardisation, developed to ensure efficiencies of space, programme time for design, and adaptability for future use. The NMD Schools are exemplars of the application of the DfE Pattern Book which sets out an adaptable series of clusters and adjacencies for all internal and external spaces required in mainstream and special schools.

The three NMD school exemplars are:

• Two form entry Primary School

• Six form entry Secondary School with Sixth Form

• 80-place ambulant Special School

Consultant Design Team:

Architect: Cullinan Studio

Building Services: Cundall

Landscape Design: Turkington Martin

Structural Engineer: Engenuiti

Educationalist: Sharon Wright, The Learning Crowd

Accessibility Consultant: Jane Simpson Access

FF&E Consultant: Red Apple Designs