Design Engine » Projects

Radley College

James Ferrero — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:47:02 +0000

In December 2009, Radley College approached Design Engine to join a shortlist of six practices in competition for their new teaching/social and art gallery complex on the Clock tower Square site, within the heart of the campus.

Design Engine’s winning scheme consists of ten history and politics classrooms, a social centre and café and extended art teaching facilities including a new double-height gallery over 2100 sq. metres.

The architecture of this £5.3 million scheme not only has to reconcile the numerous existing buildings that surround the site, including the Grade 2 Listed rackets court, but it also has to provide fluid connections internally between these buildings of varying internal floor heights.
A key consideration was to achieve a building of a timeless quality, which sits and functions in harmony with its neighbouring buildings.

The design is principally of brick with zinc roofs and ventilation towers to facilitate natural ventilation throughout. The colonnades to both Clock tower Square and the green area facing H-Social (a boarding house) are important features which are intended to order the buildings appearance by borrowing the structural grid dimensions from the adjacent rackets court whilst also providing much needed areas of covered external circulation.

The project has commenced on site with enabling works and the main contract is due to commence in March 2012, with completion in June 2013.

Greyfriars Theatre, Ringwood

James Ferrero — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 13:43:50 +0000

This formed part of a submission for an invited competition. The scheme offers transparency towards a potentially revitalised civic space between the Library and new Arts Centre. This unites two public cultural entities for Ringwood and turns an area given to servicing and inefficient car parking into a pedestrian priority area where the activities and achievements of the new Centre can be showcased to the public. The space can be seen as a level, accessible plaza which could host community events and markets as well as providing a more welcoming location for the Mobile Library. Conceptually, the indigenous red brick of Ringwood (with particular reference to the Georgian splendour of Greyfriars) is moulded from a ground plane into the theatre ‘crucible’ itself. A support wing acts as an activity and sound buffer to the neighbours, whilst a semi-transparent skin envelopes the theatre to allow total flexibility and free movement internally.

World War II Museum, Gdansk

James Ferrero — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 13:32:02 +0000

Our entry for the international WW2 Museum competition was designed in collaboration with Heyne Tillett Steel (Structural Engineers) and Grontmij (Environmental Engineers). Visitors descend into the exhibition space from a new public forum in a controlled way and in preparation for the experiences ahead. The main exhibition is a black box, where artificial lighting and sound effects will play a significant part in the visitors’ experience. A single connected rest zone allows access directly from the exhibition rooms, and visitors using this space can also re-orientate themselves by looking up through the glass ceiling to the oversailing roof above. The west end of the rest zone includes large steps, allowing people to sit, relax and contemplate, but these are also a direct reference to the West Platte bunker steps. The roof dominates the site, acting as an ‘umbrella’ and ‘parasol’ to the unique public space, harnessing energy via photovoltaic cladding. This space is completely open and free to be used by any resident or visitor to Gdansk. The space is deliberately uplifting and in total contrast to the exhibition rooms housed below your feet. The roof design is interpreted from the lost streets and buildings on this site. The remains have been mapped and, through a series of 3D manipulations, leave their impression on the underside of the canopy. Thus, this huge soffit offers the Museum a memory of the people lost from the area and the ground it is built upon.

London School of Economics

James Ferrero — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 14:09:11 +0000

Design Engine have completed the remodelling of the main reception of the Old Building, off Houghton Street, WC2. This is the main entrance foyer to the LSE and its famous Theatre, which was in need of a major transformation to meet current security, access and wayfinding improvements. The project, which was won in competition, includes a new green room for the theatre, toilets, reception and split-level waiting areas. Central to the scheme are glass cabinets, which clad the existing walls, offering information, signage and inspirational extracts from luminaries’ speeches given from the theatre.

Charterhouse Queen’s Sports Centre

James Ferrero — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 12:21:03 +0000

This planning application has been submitted to Waverley Borough Council for consideration. It involves extension and internal remodelling of the original 1995 Queens Sports Centre at Charterhouse, to offer new changing rooms, fitness suites, studios, squash courts, creche and café. The QSC sits at the North West corner of the campus occupying a slightly raised position over looking the majority of the external sports pitches. The entrance elevation faces South-East and enjoys spectacular views across the Surrey landscape. The project also includes new all weather pitches and a reconfigured parking courts on an adjacent brownfield site. The scale of the proposed extension is sympathetic with its unique location as well as responding directly to the height of the existing QSC and making the best use of the gently sloping site.

Careful internal planning has enabled the extension to incorporate four squash courts on the western side of the extension by sinking them into the ground, whilst ensuring that the overall height of the extension remains similar to the height of the existing eaves of the QSC. The mass of the extension is reduced further by cutting the building back on the western side by offering the roofs of the squash courts as a viewing terrace.

A diagonal brick and glass wall running North-East to South-West provides the containment to the internal accommodation; effectively turning the existing entrance forecourt into internal space. A curving open colonnade is constructed from a series of double pre-cast concrete columns set approximately 4.5m apart, with each column supporting a single curving pre-cast beam tied back to main facade. The colonnade, whilst influenced by the natural curve of the landscape and cricket pitch, also creates a dynamic relationship with diagonal brick facade encouraging people to enter the street from either end. The colonnade also subtly hides a sloping ground plane, allowing wheelchair users and golf buggies seamless access to the playing fields.

Charterhouse Chemistry Faculty

James Ferrero — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 11:43:58 +0000

Design Engine won this invited competition to design a new chemistry building for Charterhouse School in Godalming, Surrey in 2010. The competition involved five architects in total: Design Engine; Hopkins Architects; Panter Hudspith, Belsize Architects and Pringle Richards Sharratt Architects.

The project is seen as an opportunity to reconstruct a very damaged and poorly utilised part of the the main Gothic campus which was originally built in 1872. The new two-storey building will contain 6 new laboratories; three on each floor along with preparation areas and staff offices. The northern elevation which faces the principal entrance approach to the school is dominated by 3 stone chimneys which house the chemical flues from the laboratories. In contrast, the southern façade faces into the main campus introducing a two storey colonnade providing a new external pedestrian route at ground floor and first floor access to the classrooms whilst offering solar protection to the building.

UoS Student Union Café | Southampton

James Ferrero — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:09:50 +0000

The Student Union building at Southampton University was designed by Sir Basil Spence, the architect of Coventry Cathedral. The building occupies the site of a former brick quarry. One of the design concepts was to re-establish the ground level datum of the site before excavation of clay began. Sir Basil Spence located steel framed glass boxes above this datum, possibly influenced by the Californian Case Study Houses undertaken in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Our cafe sits below this datum within the clay zone, enjoying views across the now landscaped quarry bed.

Upham | Hampshire

James Ferrero — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:09:45 +0000

An 18th Century stone and flint barn, overwhelmed by recent steel framed outbuildings, is released and given new life as a home. The inherent character of the barn is retained, with a mezzanine threaded within the existing thresher door openings and between existing roof trusses, like a precious piece of furniture. This divides the volume into two equal living spaces. A glazed transition space turns the outside wall into an internal hall and leads onto four bedrooms and a lower snug lounge. Views out over the countryside are framed by openings in a wrapping skin around the new accommodation.

Wessex Academy | Winchester

James Ferrero — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:58:22 +0000

The Wessex Academy is a dance-based alternative learning programme designed to engage, and reframe the attitudes and behaviour of young offenders and people at risk of offending. It is modelled on an intensive and demanding contemporary dance training programme set in a professional dance training environment.
While it is delightful when participants go on to further their dance education – as has happened – the main focus of the work is on the cultivation of transferrable skills and attitudes and a new sense of belief in self and others. It is the achievement of this shift in an individual’s sense of their own potential and power to change their lives that lies at the heart of Wessex Academy.

Redbridge Lane | Southampton

James Ferrero — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:08:48 +0000

Our approach is to produce a dense living zone of clustered dwellings designed on a modern inter- pretation of the typology of the English farmstead. Each cluster will be supplemented by a freer arrangement of innovatively designed detached and semi-detached homes to create a series of micro neighbourhoods.
The composition will engage with the natural land- scape edges of Home Covert to the North and newly formed landscaped ‘corridors’ running North-South. These serve to fragment the boundary between nature and development. A new pedestrian lane is proposed to run between the clustered neighbour- hoods in order to provide short, medium and longer distance connectivity across the existing and the new community.