Devonshire Primary School
- Location
- Blackpool, UK
- Client
- Blackpool MBC
- Expertise
- Sustainability
- Building Services Engineering
- Acoustics
- Architecture
- Completion
- 2006
- Cost
- £6.5m
State-of-the-art school on a restricted site. The design is built around user needs and natural daylight: classrooms face north — ensuring good day lighting without overheating — and play decks face south, with shelter providing protection from the sun.






State-of-the-art school on a restricted site. We adapted our multi-level vertical exemplar school design to create the ‘Beehive’ — a ground-breaking building with pod-style classrooms and multi-use games area. The design is built around user needs and natural daylight: classrooms face north — ensuring good day lighting without overheating — and play decks face south, with shelter providing protection from the sun. We utilised an internal street to divide the ground floor into four functional quadrants: staff/admin, nursery/reception, community/multi-use facilities and the main hall/dining areas. The roof of the main hall is a landscaped garden, while teacher accommodation sits at upper levels at either side of the central circulation node and can be accessed off the semi-external play decks.
Design Expertise
Architecture, Environmental Engineering, Structural Engineering, Landscape Architecture, Lighting, Acoustics
Brief
Build a modern school on a tight urban site
Results
Cutting-edge teaching environment full utilisation of a tight urban plot award: RIBA Award 2007