Low budget school opens to much praise

St John Bosco Arts College is a new build secondary 1,100 place Catholic girls’ school in Croxteth, Liverpool.

The new school is housed in a 91m x 55m three storey single span column free environment, which contains an exciting mix of learning environments and social spaces, focusing on a sculpted landscape at the heart of the school.

With a budget of just £1043/sqm the response uses a simple efficient building form which delivers 15% more area than the traditional BB98 school, allowing for greater flexibility to create both transformational and inspirational spaces.

Colour, graphics and clever internal planning to minimise circulation space and allowing for multiple functions, have created a unique response to the school’s identity and sense of place in its community.

The potentially singular large open environment is subdivided by ‘The Hill’, a central device which creates a series of spaces and scales of environment to suit different functions.

Project director Mark Braund said: “The building feels like a new breed of school, unique, contemporary and an excellent example of how small budgets don’t necessarily have to deliver standard products. The school and pupils are over the moon with it.”