Education

A Montessori nursery needs something quite different from a training centre. And a Deaf child experiences a corridor differently from a hearing child. Our education work starts from those differences, not from a standard template. From early years, to schools, to adult training, every project starts with the people who’ll use the space: what they’re learning, and what they need.

At a Montessori nursery in Islington, we converted a Victorian canal-side industrial building into classrooms for children from babies to pre-school. In Slough, the Aspire training centre turned a modest unit on a trading estate into a hybrid of classroom, office and factory, welcoming to company directors and schoolchildren alike. Their client called it “turning an ordinary building into something extraordinary”. A 13-year-old visitor put it another way: “It’s brilliant here, Miss!”

At Heathlands School in St Albans, the UK’s largest school for Deaf children, we designed a building which embraces DeafSpace principles, treating sight and touch as forms of communication in their own right, not afterthoughts to sound.