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Walnuts Special School
Alex Freemantle as Principal Architect, Architecture MK
Client Milton Keynes Education Authority
Contract Value £6,000,000
Completion May 2007
New school with residential accommodation for 90 pupils aged 5 to 18 with Autistic Spectrum Disorder.
The site layout has been designed to create 2 inner courtyards providing a secure and protected external space. Pupils with ASD often dislike change and are easily distracted. The teaching spaces are simple and repetitive and each classroom has a small withdrawal room as a retreat space for pupils who are upset or excessively distracted. The main teaching spaces face north to avoid glare and shadows. Although the brief asked for windowless teaching rooms we proposed an amount of glazing that would give good daylight levels but which is opaque at eye level with a small clear area controlled by blinds so views out are possible if desired.
The scheme includes a purpose designed Kaleidoscope room for therapeutic purposes and ground floor art and food technology spaces that are more outward looking than the general classrooms with external doors to terraces as part of the main courtyard design. There are specialist science and food technology spaces and the residential accommodation includes a small flat to enable the older pupils to learn to live independently.
Surface water drainage is designed on a SUDS basis
