DeD - Design studio

For All Life's Moments, Birmingham, UK
Competition Entry organized by RIBA Journal
Our proposal was inspired took the now closed down but recently constructed John Lewis department store in Birmingham, the competition required a re-imagining of a disused department store, as a small secondary school building. the key challenges of these buildings are to provide both cellular and open plan spaces at different scales and typologies of use, within the large deep planned floor plate of the typical department store, often located within the city centre and embedded within larger shopping complexes.

Our notion was to hollow out the internal space to create a hive like internal topography that contains niches, and folded spaces within a large open void that orientates building users thus avoiding institutional corridors and bringing light down into the centre of the building. with its city centre location the streetscape and ground floor acts as a 'shop front' for the schools activities with a highly connected podium level providing the central forum for the school building itself which contains all the specialist classrooms and workshops. Typical classrooms wrap the limited outer perimeter with small group open plan and private group spaces populating the inner landscape looking down onto the forum below.
Image: The Hive from Below 05/06
Image Credit: DeD_Studio

-reuse


-design

For All Life's Moments, Birmingham, UK
Competition Entry organized by RIBA Journal
Our proposal was inspired took the now closed down but recently constructed John Lewis department store in Birmingham, the competition required a re-imagining of a disused department store, as a small secondary school building. the key challenges of these buildings are to provide both cellular and open plan spaces at different scales and typologies of use, within the large deep planned floor plate of the typical department store, often located within the city centre and embedded within larger shopping complexes.

Our notion was to hollow out the internal space to create a hive like internal topography that contains niches, and folded spaces within a large open void that orientates building users thus avoiding institutional corridors and bringing light down into the centre of the building. with its city centre location the streetscape and ground floor acts as a 'shop front' for the schools activities with a highly connected podium level providing the central forum for the school building itself which contains all the specialist classrooms and workshops. Typical classrooms wrap the limited outer perimeter with small group open plan and private group spaces populating the inner landscape looking down onto the forum below.
Image: View towards Skylight
Image Credit: DeD_Studio

-reuse


-design

For All Life's Moments, Birmingham, UK
Competition Entry organized by RIBA Journal
Our proposal was inspired took the now closed down but recently constructed John Lewis department store in Birmingham, the competition required a re-imagining of a disused department store, as a small secondary school building. the key challenges of these buildings are to provide both cellular and open plan spaces at different scales and typologies of use, within the large deep planned floor plate of the typical department store, often located within the city centre and embedded within larger shopping complexes.

Our notion was to hollow out the internal space to create a hive like internal topography that contains niches, and folded spaces within a large open void that orientates building users thus avoiding institutional corridors and bringing light down into the centre of the building. with its city centre location the streetscape and ground floor acts as a 'shop front' for the schools activities with a highly connected podium level providing the central forum for the school building itself which contains all the specialist classrooms and workshops. Typical classrooms wrap the limited outer perimeter with small group open plan and private group spaces populating the inner landscape looking down onto the forum below.

Patterned surfaces in both the walls and ceiling give the spaces variety texture as well as providing an acoustically sensitive and stimulating education environment.

Image: The Hive from Below 01/06
Image Credit: DeD_Studio

-reuse


-design