DCP at the BRITS

Daniel Connal Partnership have recently gained planning permission for a dramatic new building at the world renowned Brit School for Performing Arts. The annual BRIT awards continue to demonstrate the phenomenal talent that the academy has produced over the last few years. Artists such as Katie Melua, Amy Winehouse, Leona Lewis, Adele and Kate Nash are all former students of a school, which is funded partly by the Brit Academy.

Suffering from an overall lack of space to accommodate their curriculum the Governors decided to go to the market to find a solution using a competitive tender process.

As you would expect from such an organisation, the school wanted a dynamic and cost effective solution and invited leading practices to submit tenders.

The Daniel Connal Partnership won the contract because they were able to provide an innovative solution in the form of an attractive, functional and dynamic new block where music and dance halls could be located, freeing up areas within the existing building to house the IT facilities, a library and restaurant along with the addition of digital editing facilities and a new lecture theatre.

The design team at Daniel Connal met with staff before submitting proposals to fully understand the schools requirements, allowing the design team to use their experience and creativity to achieve a scheme which incorporated the desired space in a way that was appropriate and pleasing to the stakeholders.

Samuel Brackley lead designer of the building says:

“This approach of working with the client and stakeholders achieved a design which encompasses a curved roof forming a “pod” over the 4 metre high dance halls and generates an attractive design feature. The elevations use colour and shape to generate an appearance which is dramatically different to the other buildings on the site and shows the evolution of educational space and design“.

“The exterior design is modern and sets the new building apart from the existing 1996 building, capturing the latest design in terms of environmental sustainability and efficiency whilst reflecting the energy and creative flair being generated by the school internally from an aesthetic point of view.”

Having won the tender the team worked closely with the school and planners utilising the pre-application consultation process to manage a potentially difficult application. For example the urban design team at Croydon sought a design that would reflect the creativity of the school and satisfy the sustainability criteria. Working closely to agree appropriate measures DCP incorporated such technologies as a ground source heat pump which will allow the school to achieve 10% of its energy requirement through an on site ground source heat pump.
(This can both extract heat from the ground during cold weather and remove excess heat from the building during hot weather.)

The development of the design allowed the new building to achieve an initial BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) assessment rating of “very good“.

The application went before Croydon Council’s planning committee in February 2008 where the councillors not only unanimously approved the application but also went as far as to comment that the design was “inspiring“.

The project is due to start construction in April / May 2008 with a scheduled completion of December 2009. The Daniel Connal Partnership are currently working on the next stage of the detailed design with other key consultants.