coombes : everitt Your Sector Meldreth Hub
Meldreth Hub
Sector
Specialist Care – new reception building and hydrotherapy centre
Client
The Aurora Group
Location
Cambridgeshire
Project Value:
£3.5m
The Aurora group had previously acquired a new site and were in the process of updating the existing building stock to provide improved residential and day student provision. They also wished to create a new hub which would serve as a welcoming arrival to the school as well as accommodating a hydrotherapy centre and other facilities that would be accessible to the local community as well students and residents of the school.
The final scheme is a building which enhances the overall experience for visitors and residents alike. The building forms a seamless and inviting route into the school, welcoming and encouraging both residents and visitors into the site and reflecting Aurora Group’s commitment to inclusivity and accessibility.
The Brief:
• To create a new public entrance to the school site to enhance the experience of arriving at Meldreth Manor School for all those visiting and living at the site.
• One of the key objectives was to provide a clear point of entry to the school and to encourage a greater level of interaction between the school and the wider community.
• A new building also offered the opportunity to provide additional facilities to benefit both visitors, residents and day students specifically a reception area, a hydrotherapy pool, meeting rooms and a café where residents would have the opportunity to get involved in preparing food and serving the public to gain valuable work experience.
• To create a flexible outdoor space that could be opened up to the public for events when required to support greater community interaction.
Key Challenges:
• To develop a scheme that related to the orchard it would sit within.
• How to creatively work within the constraints of the existing site, and the limitations of the space available, to accommodate a substantial building.
• The new building needed to be fully accessible and welcoming whilst also maintaining the security and privacy of the residents and meeting all regulatory requirements.
• Create sensitive but clear definition of where the public and open spaces end and the private areas begin.
• In particular, to create an external café space that has an attractive outlook but doesn’t allow external visitors to enter the rest of the campus without restriction.
Our Responsibilities:
Specialist Advice
Our Solution:
Our vision was to create a transformative building that elevated the entire site experience, setting the tone for a warm and inclusive environment. Our final design was an architectural contrast to the existing buildings on the site with a softer, more welcoming appearance. The resulting scheme makes a positive visual addition to the existing geometric buildings whilst maintaining and enhancing the surrounding landscape.
The layout of the various functional requirements naturally lent themselves to a covered walkway into the school, initially greeting arrivals and followed by a range of different activities taking place along the pathway providing opportunities for residents and the wider community to interact.
The mature trees and their root protection zones helped inform the planned form of the building. Our final design was an imaginative response to these parameters, with a building based around a sinuous central pathway that narrows as it progresses through the building. Wide curves at the approach clearly signpost the entrance of the building and the narrowing of the curved design creates an obvious point of arrival to the rest of the campus at the end of the path. This, along with careful ordering of amenities, helped to address the issue of the need to control access without an obvious barrier or gateway. This was far removed from the stereo typical institutional corridor feeling that a long, straight route would have created.
External timber cladding and internal wooden columns echo the wooded setting next to the existing orchard and green wildflower roofs help to mitigate the impact of the building on the open space. The hydroptherapy pool required specific design considerations. These were creatively addressed via a low mono pitch roof above pool hall which provides the required increased ceiling height, natural light and ventilation at a high level whilst maintaining an aesthetic in keeping with the overall design.
The new hub building also provided the opportunity to improve accessibility to the natural landscapes of the campus and offer attractive outlooks from the new facilities. In addition, the overhanging roof design also created natural sheltered outdoor spaces for use by residents to support skills development, outdoor seating space for the café and another adjacent to the café that could be made accessible to members of the public when appropriate.
Throughout the design process, we worked closely with the multi-faceted team to maximise accessibility features. This included ensuring all entrances had level thresholds, all doorways were wide enough to accommodate larger motorised wheelchairs, visual wayfinding throughout and a specialist hoist system in hydrotherapy pool to lift users from the changing area to the pool and back directly.