EC Harris - General - London, Ealing
Date: 10 Jul 2008
An EC Harris led team has completed a 'Changing Rooms' type makeover in Southfield Primary School in Ealing as part of National School Environments Week. The project was extensively covered on BBC Breakfast culminating in the handover on Friday, June 27th.
The makeover saw three key areas of Southfield Primary School transformed in a five day project to show how educational spaces can be changed to provide improved learning and teaching opportunities for pupils and staff. The EC Harris team, working with Alexi Marmot Associates (AMA), transformed the art room in the 100 year old building into an exciting multi-use learning space with an ICT-rich mezzanine
floor using the latest thin client technology.
Peter Cobrin, Senior Education Consultant at EC Harris, explains, "We wanted to show that even the most unlikely space can be transformed with
imagination into one in which teachers and children can enjoy learning. Not every school can have the luxury of a new-built environment and we want this project to be a showcase for what a low-cost intervention can achieve.
"EC Harris was a founder member of the British Council for School Environments (BCSE) in 2003 and we welcome this opportunity to support their commitment to creating exciting learning environments."
All the work and equipment on the Southfield project was provided for free. A detailed costing and programme model will be made available for other schools as part of the upcoming Ealing Primary Capital Programme, and elsewhere.
After consultation with pupils and school staff, EC Harris produced a detailed design. The Wilmot Dixon construction team built this off-site and then re-assembled it within 3 days, minimising impact on school life. A 20% increase in floor space was created and the second phase turned this into an ICT-rich area with full access to all school resources. Southfield's concern with sustainability meant that this was all done with minimal increases in power usage and no heat output on the environment whilst maximising the impact on teaching and learning -
hence the thin client solution.
Additional work in the Art room, aside from redecorating, included the installation of an interactive white board, supplied and fitted by
Steljes, and suspended acoustic panels which removed the echo which had blighted classes since 1906.
The EC Harris Team was supported by the generosity of Novus Technology who are leading proponents of sustainable computing solutions, Modular Cabling Systems who resolved the problems of connectivity, and Hewlett Packard, Citrix, Microsoft and Computacenter Distribution, all of whom have contributed resources to this project.
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