Since 2010 Feilden Fowles have been working closely with Ralph Allen School, a co-educational comprehensive secondary school in Bath, on various projects ranging from landscape interventions to multiple new buildings.

Central to the success of these interventions has been the creation and continuous evolution of a campus masterplan, to guide and focus interventions within the context of the school’s ambition and changing requirements.

The masterplan is guided by consistent principles: removing dilapidated buildings, opening views to the Cotswolds, renovating ageing fabric, creating landscaped courtyard gardens for socialising and play, and enhancing the site’s identity with improved teaching and learning facilities.

This is the first major element of the broader masterplan and will form a new cornerstone to the Ralph Allen School campus. The two-storey Applied Learning Centre focuses on science – the foundation school’s specialist subject – comprising four classrooms, arranged in adjoining pairs around a double height breakout space for independent learning. It is designed as a porous building in the round, with teaching spaces leading out onto the learning landscape. The series of open, flexible spaces are designed around more of a university-style of independent learning than the traditional school model.

Constructed in cross-laminated timber, the building is partly embedded in the landscape, accessed by ramps leading up to the first floor gallery level. A hung larch façade marches across the elevations with a strong vertical rhythm, giving way to dark-stained timber at the lower level, which are also used elsewhere to express deep cuts in the building envelope. The project employs an earthy palette of materials, including polished limecrete floors, using limestone excavated from the site, as well as rammed earth.

As part of the ongoing Ralph Allen School Masterplan developed in 2010, the purpose of the new block is to replace outdated, temporary buildings that clutter the south of the campus with a purpose-made teaching block on the west of the school site. The placement for this new building mirrors the original block, aligned at either end of a new organisational “street” running east-west through the school. The new addition, placed south of the Applied Learning Centre forms a new courtyard of similar scale to the main quad at the heart of the school.

The new block aims to emulate the rationality of the original block, whilst providing high performing teaching spaces.

Construction takes cues from the Applied Learning Centre, with a cross-laminated timber structure – exposed at least once in each classroom – and timber cladding to the north walkway facing the shared courtyard shared. Soft timber linings to two links through the building, connecting the courtyard to the southern landscape, and the covered walkway, emphasise the notion of cuts in a solid mass.

The Katherine Johnson Building was delivered as the second phase of Ralph Allen School’s masterplan, providing a new eight-classroom teaching block for the Maths department, with a staff room, learning resource room and WC facilities. The building reflects the light masonry palette found throughout the site, with generous covered external staircases and balconies. Each classroom is dual aspect, benefiting from views to the landscaped courtyard and/or to the valley beyond. The centrally located staff room and LRC, provide passive supervision of the courtyard. The generous circulation space allows views to the outdoors in all directions and provides ample room during the change-over in classes.

The new courtyard continues the language of the existing landscaped gardens between the buildings across the school site. The external teaching spaces and circulation at ground floor help reduce the pressure off internal circulation at busy times, whilst creating relaxed opportunities for socialising and interaction, away from the playing fields. The building location, within the school site, was an under-utilised and neglected part of the site, previously having been used for car parking, storage, and as an informal sports area, although pupils were not allowed in this area, without being supervised.

The fortunate timing gave the school eight additional classrooms in order to implement their covid related procedures. Although conceived and designed prior to the recent pandemic, the underlying concepts of the building create a healthy environment and promote good hygiene. All ground floor classrooms (and WC area) can be accessed directly from the outside, alleviating pressure on the internal corridors, and providing external teaching space. At ground floor a wash trough is provided in the WC area for easy access to hand washing facilities.