A new Community Campus located on a greenfield site between Kilbirnie and Beith to replace the ageing Garnock Academy within Kilbirnie town centre. This new development integrates a local nursery, primary school and secondary school whilst providing modern leisure facilities for the local community all under one North Ayrshire Council managed facility. The new campus also provides a new car parking facility along with a separate school bus park with appropriate pedestrian linkages.
The Campus building is a series of individual wings flowing from a central entrance hub with community facilities such as the library, café and leisure entrance. This central core also serves the main school with dining facilities and break out spaces from the pupils.
Location: Ayrshire
Client: –
Value: £ 36 Million
Project Dates: 2016
The main teaching areas are split into two wings. The Nursery and Primary School pupils are housed in a two storey post-tensioned concrete framed wing to the front of the school with the Secondary school teaching spaces in a 2/3 storey concrete framed wing to the rear. The use of the flat slab post-tensioned concrete construction allows for a simple services strategy and also allowed the architect to expose the slab soffits. The leisure facilities serving both the school and the local area including a swimming pool, training pool, gymnasium, fitness centre and two full size games halls were housed in a two storey steel and precast slab wing to the front of the school with the long span double height spaces of the halls suited to the lightweight steel construction.
To the rear of the school there is a generous external play area provision including a full-size grass pitch and a 4G Synthetic playing surface which was created by extensive remodelling of the previous rolling agricultural land. Approx 60,000m3 of material was re-worked with levels changed up to 5m in some areas.