St Christina’s School Music Suite, Regents Park

The school wished to create new facilities for their music department, to include classrooms and practice rooms. Space on the complex urban site was severely constrained, and so alternatives were to be considered in terms of where the music department could be constructed.

The proposed music department sits on the roof of the existing school buildings, with its external massing largely defined by the various Rights of Light, Daylight and Sunlight constraints of the adjoining residential buildings. This resulted in low ceiling heights towards the edges of the building, and so these were attenuated through the introduction of a whole series of simple upstanding openable rooflights, which not only provided light and ventilation, but also increased the perception of ceiling height notably.

The interior of the department uses a warm oak for flooring and also wall panelling below dado, with all usable wall space then given over to storage, white boards, black boards or pin boards. Storage was designed to accommodate standard third party units, with each room feeling bright and spacious due to the rising pitch of the roof and also the various rooflights.

Practice rooms are created in what would have been lost space to the side of the corridor, by increasing the size of the rooflights to give additional ceiling height. An acoustic glass wall adjacent the corridor then isolated the practice spaces acoustically whilst making them open visibly to the activity of the school to reduce any feeling of claustrophobia or stress associated with being in a small space.

Externally the existing brick was extended upwards to form a plinth to reduce the perceived mass of the rooftop addition, with everything above cill level then constructed in a precision finished anodised aluminium cladding, with sharp edges and profiles.

The school wished to create new facilities for their music department, to include classrooms and practice rooms. Space on the complex urban site was severely constrained, and so alternatives were to be considered in terms of where the music department could be constructed.

The proposed music department sits on the roof of the existing school buildings, with its external massing largely defined by the various Rights of Light, Daylight and Sunlight constraints of the adjoining residential buildings. This resulted in low ceiling heights towards the edges of the building, and so these were attenuated through the introduction of a whole series of simple upstanding openable rooflights, which not only provided light and ventilation, but also increased the perception of ceiling height notably.

The interior of the department uses a warm oak for flooring and also wall panelling below dado, with all usable wall space then given over to storage, white boards, black boards or pin boards. Storage was designed to accommodate standard third party units, with each room feeling bright and spacious due to the rising pitch of the roof and also the various rooflights.

Practice rooms are created in what would have been lost space to the side of the corridor, by increasing the size of the rooflights to give additional ceiling height. An acoustic glass wall adjacent the corridor then isolated the practice spaces acoustically whilst making them open visibly to the activity of the school to reduce any feeling of claustrophobia or stress associated with being in a small space.

Externally the existing brick was extended upwards to form a plinth to reduce the perceived mass of the rooftop addition, with everything above cill level then constructed in a precision finished anodised aluminium cladding, with sharp edges and profiles.