Fernlea Primary School · 2021
Fernlea timber classroom pavilion
Two classrooms and a covered outdoor teaching space, prefabricated in timber cassettes and assembled over a seven-week summer holiday.
- Client
- Fernlea Primary School
- Year
- 2021
- Role
- Architect and lead consultant
- Duration
- 11 months
- Services
- Full design service
- Offsite coordination
The problem
Fernlea Primary had two classes taught in a 1970s mobile unit that was too hot in June and too cold in February. The school wanted two permanent classrooms and somewhere to teach outdoors in the rain. The budget was $1.05 million, and the governors would not accept building work in term time on a site shared with 420 children.
That left one summer holiday, seven weeks, for everything from foundations to furniture. The only access was a single-lane track past the playground. The field also floods along its lower edge after heavy rain, so the pavilion had to sit on the higher ground beside a row of mature oaks with protected root zones.
Process
- 01
Designed around a lorry
We sized every wall and roof cassette to fit a rigid lorry on the access track, then designed the plan around those panels. A 3.6-metre grid gave two classrooms of 64 m² each, a shared cloakroom and toilets, and a covered veranda facing the oaks. Screw piles kept clear of the root protection zones.
- 02
Passivhaus-level fabric, simple controls
Insulated timber cassettes with wood-fibre boards, triple-glazed windows and an airtight membrane brought heating demand down to 15 kWh/m² a year. Deep eaves and external blinds on the south side stop summer overheating. Teachers have one switch per room: ventilation boost on or off. Air-source heat pumps sized for the whole year sit in a timber enclosure behind the cloakroom, out of reach of footballs.
- 03
Seven weeks, counted backwards
Screw piles and drainage went in over the Easter break. The cassettes were built in a workshop through May and June while we inspected weekly. The superstructure went up in nine days in July, leaving five weeks for services, finishes and a snagging day with the teachers.
Selected images
We left for the summer with a field and came back to two classrooms. The children call the veranda the porch, and it is the most used room in the school.
Outcome
Both classrooms opened on the first day of the autumn term. Measured heating demand in the first winter was 16 kWh/m² a year, and summer temperatures have not exceeded 26°C indoors. The covered veranda is used for lessons on most days, including wet ones. The final account closed at $1.03 million, about $4,300 per m², and the school has since asked us to replace its second mobile unit with the same system.
- 240 m²
- Floor area incl. veranda
- 16
- kWh/m² a year heating
- 7 wks
- From piles to furniture
Keep reading
All work