Last September,
during Open City event in London, Evelyn Grace Academy in Brixton was included
in the list of the event and it was a nice opportunity to visit recent Zaha’s work.
Hundreds of people came to the school and agreed it is an unusual architecture
and special experience. After the visiting, it was thought that writing an
article about Evelyn Grace Academy would be worth to understand new trend of
education buildings in UK and Zaha’s approach for the type of architecture.
Therefore, when Korean Institute of Educational Facilities asked to contribute
an article about recent UK education building, it was easy to decide topic of
the article.
Through the
article, there are three main arguments to look deeply at Evelyn Grace Academy.
Firstly, from the point of urban policy, this building should be understood as
a flagship project in a devastated urban area and as an education led urban
regeneration. ARK Schools, an education charity and the founder of the school, believes
that education is an important method to cut the cycle of poverty. This charity
supports to increase education quality in impoverished areas and has set up 11
schools in UK. Evelyn Grace Academy has been planned for not only a stunning
shape of architecture in old affordable housing areas but also finding a
possibility to overcome poverty and inequality in Brixton that had no secondary
school.
Image by Networking City / Social housing in Brixton
Secondly, as
considering the internal relationships, this school needs to be examined as a
small society, furthermore, as a city. Although school (especially university)
generally has been understood as a city because lots of students and staffs
stay in, Evelyn Grace Academy which has four schools in the building is much
more complex and complicate than other schools. Definitely, there should be more
delicate considerations to make discreet management system and adequate collaboration
between the schools from the early stage of the building design. As a result of
the considerations, the corridors of this building, wider than normal school
corridors, play a role like streets in small town by variation of visual
effects, diverse volumes of internal space and good connection with internal
and external space, and it leads more social activities of students.
Lastly, Evelyn
Grace Academy is a good example to show how architects fight against the common
ideas of ‘school’, one of the most quantificational and standardized
architectural type, within limited budget and area with keeping their design ideas
and its final quality. There are many regulations and basic standards for the school
building like suitable class size, noise and so on. The architects had have to consider
how dynamic form and space make a cool relationship with standardized room
size, basic class unit and needed clear functionality. Z shape of Evelyn Grace
Academy, which is very unusual among school projects, was suggested for complex
programs and effective using the site rather than Zaha’s design tendency. (Interview
with Lars Teichmann, Project Architect) Architects generally do not want to
make Z shape because it is hard to solve functional problems in the plan even
though it is a private house. But in this project, Z shape of the building
makes a clear distinctive point in contrast to other school projects and the herald
symbol showing the change of the most deprived area in the UK.
Some people have a cynical
view for Zaha’s works. I was one of them.
However, after visiting
Evelyn Grace Academy, when her project is seen on website or magazine, the
project attracts me more than before.
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