St Paul’s Girls’ School in Hammersmith, London, consistently ranked top independent school, and one of the first of its kind in the UK, recognised a lack of technology and engineering subjects at their school, rendering them inadvertently outdated and gender stereotyped. The students showed an appetite for technological creativity and disruptive thinking, so they set a strategic vision to create an exemplary design and innovation centre, inspiring the next generation of women in technology.
Accommodating innovative subjects has very particular spatial requirements. With their turn-of-the-century historic buildings and location within an extremely constrained site surrounded by terraced houses, the school would struggle to utilise existing structures to achieve their goal.
Instead, they’re creating a new Centre for Design & Innovation, following the demolition of two existing buildings. The Centre, designed by Jessico & Wyles Architects, will provide an exciting, new type of classroom environment purpose-built for problem-based learning, collaboration, and experimenting with emerging technologies.
Several workshop spaces will each be large enough to accommodate a whole class, alongside machinery and tools, and they’re introducing a brand new subject, Computer Science and Creative Technology, held in three large IT spaces for electronic fabrication and computing.
Activity in the new building will be completely on show throughout, maximising collaboration across all year groups. It’s also non-departmental, so all subjects can tap into its resources.
At the heart of the Centre will be a double-height theatre space for lectures, exhibitions, interaction, and cross-fertilisation of ideas. The theatre is designed to be acoustically isolated and can be made completely dark to showcase experiments and technologies like VR.
