The Garden Classroom is a flexible space at Tate Britain for workshops and events related to horticulture and art, part of the wider Clore Garden designed to reimagine the gallery’s grounds as a new biodiverse landscape for London.

As the first new permanent building on the site since James Stirling’s Clore Gallery, completed in 1987, it sets out its own character while engaging the layered and rich material history of Millbank and London more broadly. The footprint is designed to articulate a series of functional outdoor yards, turning the constraints of the site into opportunities for outdoor activity. An ancillary structure houses supporting facilities, framing an enclosed back-of-house courtyard that includes a generous outdoor sink for visitor and volunteer handwashing, as well as water for gardener’s practical uses.

Feilden Fowles, working in collaboration with Tom Stuart- Smith, won the competition to redesign Tate Britain’s landscape. The Garden Classroom, as a stand-alone pavilion, anchors this transformation — a contemporary garden building set within an urban biodiverse green space, offering Tate a durable, adaptable space for learning and outreach at the heart of its historic site.

The light-weight, low-carbon timber frame is clad in a tactile surface of stone, which can be glimpsed through the planting from the main site.

Reversing the conventional hierarchy of materials, the Portland stone tiles become an expressive upper shell, playfully referencing the plinth of Tate Lodge, Stirling’s Portland stone grid and Smith’s portico.

The construction embodies an ambitious environmental strategy: light-touch pile foundations protect the roots of a neighbouring Plane tree; passive ventilation, natural insulation, and triple glazing minimise operational energy use; and careful detailing reduces the embodied impact of construction.