Yahoo Finance Space-age school classroom pod must be saved from demolition
Imagine being taught in a classroom that was like something from Star Trek. Or, I don’t know, like the Media Centre at Lord’s Cricket Ground.
Well, funnily enough, pupils at Grey Court Secondary School in Ham, Richmond-upon-Thames were taught a miniature version of the Media Centre, and designed by the same architects as that Stirling Prize winner: Future Systems.
Called the Ingenium Classroom Pod, it has hosted students since it was designed in 2004 and has been called a ‘B-movie alien spaceship’ and an ‘oversized iPod’. Now though, this beloved classroom is facing demolition, as it must make way for a new classroom block since the school has increased from 500 to 1600 pupils over the past few years.
The10m x 16m pod has also fallen into a state of unrepair.
However, the Twentieth Century Society, which campaigns to save outstanding buildings and design, are calling out for someone to find it a new home. Clearly, it has potential to be renovated and put to new purpose, but things have to happen fast as its due to be torn down by 20th December.
Oli Marshall, Campaigns Director at the Twentieth Century Society says, “Sports pavilion? Ice-cream parlour? Park café? Art gallery? Tourist info centre? With a little imagination, there’s ample re-use potential for this miniature modern classic.”
The pod was built as a pilot project for the ‘World Classrooms of the Future’ programme in 2003-04, funded by the Department for Education during the New Labour government. Each classroom was designed by a different architect to fulfil the specific school’s immediate needs.
The brief was to provide a better environment for teaching and learning, by diverting some of the funds that were then going into modernising and renewing older school building stock, to invest in exemplary new facilities fit for the future.
Future Systems was an innovative London-based architectural and design practice, founded in 1979 and led by Jan Kaplický and Amanda Levete. In addition to the Lord’s Media Centre, Future Systems is perhaps best known for the Selfridges Birmingham store (2003) in the city’s Bullring shopping centre, clad with 15,000 anodised aluminium discs, said to have been inspired by a Paco Rabanne dress.
Their buildings have been called ‘blobitecture’ for their organic and aerodynamic shapes, made possible through the advent of computer-aided-design in architecture. Future Systems dissolved in 2009 following Kaplický’s death, with Levete going on to found her own successful practice, AL_A.
The Ingenium pod classroom was prefabricated from modular GRP (Glass Reinforced Plastic) components using semi-monocoque boat-building technology, and was designed to be dismantlable and relocatable.. The use of suspended circular acoustic discs, integrated with the high-level natural ventilation openings, ensured that the appropriate acoustic environment was achieved. The unit is also equipped with a self-contained toilet, cloakroom and services area.
“Future Systems were one of the true ‘starchitect’ practices of the 90s and 00s yet had relatively few built-projects,” Marshall says, “So this is an exceedingly rare opportunity to acquire an original. But prospective new owners will need to move fast: the end of term signals the end of the road for this particular pod. Are you the right organisation or individual to give it a second chance? Get in touch!”
Interested parties should contact coordinator@c20society.org.uk for more information
