St Albans School Mathematics Faculty

A new mathematics faculty on a tight site bounding the historic town centre.

The growing demand for Maths within the school is met by classrooms, break-out and study spaces, all forming a building dedicated to Maths teaching.

The constrained site drove the external form, with the front façade staggered to fit a curved access road, and is more or less blank because it faces a large wall to the sports centre. This blank façade is treated as a blackboard, still an important facet of Maths practice, and used to display maths equations and diagrams.

Service and circulation spaces lie behind this blackboard, with teaching rooms arranged in a row facing the other lower, existing building. A multi-use double-height space is provided centrally with a dramatic circular window detail.

The roof is curved to reduce the scale of the long facades facing overlooking spaces between new and existing buildings.