This project for The Learning Trust in Hackney was designed to enable the school and the local education authority to develop the brief, understand the scope and constraints of the project and to inform the selection of the contractor, who was then selected, with their designers, from the Academies Framework. The new Skinners’ Academy at Woodberry Down will be a six form entry mixed sex 11-18 years school sponsored by the Skinners’ Company, with a total pupil number of 1150 and a likely gross internal floor area of approximately 10,340 m2. Our work enabled the business case to be developed, developed the site strategy and investigated the site constraints. The final scheme, now on site is a refinement of this approach.
We have also developed proposals for the adjacent Woodberry Down Primary School and other education facilities so that a complementary range of education opportunities will be sited close together and can act as a ‘Learning Campus’.
The Academy, and this wider Learning Campus, are seen as essential components of the regeneration of the local area, which is being driven forward through the Woodberry Down Masterplan, which we prepared with Matrix Partnership and a team of consultants. Woodberry Down is a former London County Council housing estate, formerly of over 2000 homes, developed in the 1940’s and 50’s. After undertaking a series of comprehensive studies over the last few years, Hackney Council has made a commitment to re-build. The masterplan covers some 43.6 hectares, bordered at the north by the New River and the boundary of the London Borough of Haringey, with the Stoke Newington area of Hackney just to the south, the London Borough of Islington to the west, and other parts of Hackney to the south and east. Implementation of the masterplan will increase density, replacing the 2000 or so homes of the Woodberry Down estate with some 4,600 new houses and flats.
