To make a Primary school is to find pleasure in the process of changing young lives, to sit on tiny chairs and talk to kids about how they learn they love, and to understand, what makes them smile, think hard or play and laugh.

Our work’s qualities lie in response to place and effective use of a small steeply sloping site.

St Silas is a community school in the heart a Northern Lancashire Mill town, set in the Victorian street pattern, of closes and steep hillsides, terraces and two up two downs for mill workers. The project replaced a damp and dark Victorian school with no external play space with light animated learning spaces with fun at their heart. It is small, but nimble, as it sits almost invisible in the terraces, most views of it are oblique and discreet, yet from the tower of the church nearby it is alien and bright among the slate and red brick.

The previous iteration of the school had a mass that filled the southern boundary with subsequent extensions and alterations creating a somewhat fragmented play environment. The new design sought to arrange the building as the site boundary and create a protected courtyard with multiple external terraces wrapping around giving increasingly distant horizons to the user as they progress vertically through the school.

A rooftop football pitch, the domain of the years 5 & 6 pupils yet accessible to all sits within the overall mass of the building. At the lower ground floor, the deeper spaces include the dining area connected to the main hall, kitchens and a special breakout learning zone, top lit from the streetscape above and can be turned into a variety of fun learning spaces.

The building is steel framed with insulated cladding and wrapped in a colourful cloak of Perspex in pastel pinks, blues, yellow and greens which change appearance as the light moves across the form.

The whole school is transparent in a way that allows a community to feel part of the day and breaks barriers down. Class spaces are arranged carefully round the heart, visually linked to the streets around, now through the energetic filter of art work and teachers ‘stick ups’ that add a layer of collage to carefully composed spaces and elevations.