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© BDP Highbury Grove was rebuilt for £30 million under the now-
defunct BSF programme for the London Borough of Islington. Its financial deal included the move to the site of Samuel
Rhodes School, which caters for children with moderate learning disabilities and shares some facilities with its larger neighbour. The original Highbury Grove was about 45 years old and no
longer lent itself well to modern uses, as it was congested inter- nally and generally showing its age. Associate headteacher Henry Jones says: “The old building was
from the 1960s and had been quite innovative in its time but it was past its sell-by date, dark and circulation spaces were very narrow. “It was congested and difficult to use, with a lot of different
levels, and nothing to meet the Disability Discrimination Act.” Its replacement is a reversed ‘L’ shape, with the long side along
a main road and the bottom of the ‘L’ turning to form the sports centre, the hall and Samuel Rhodes School. Architects BDP had a free hand with the design, with two
exceptions. The first being that the old school had a swimming pool that had to be retained, though it had been refurbished. Highbury Grove is open for community use outside school hours, so with the swimming pool as fixed point, it made sense to place other indoor sports facilities, the hall, theatre and din- ing hall nearby so that external users were concentrated in one part of the building. But these facilities could not be built at ground level as they would have formed a solid wall that cut Samuel Rhodes off from Highbury Grove. The other problem was the plant room that housed the boil-
ers – under the new school’s footprint – was still in use to power the old school. Clearly, piles could not be driven through a work- ing boiler room. BDP architect associate Dominic Hook, explains how the firm went about designing the school. “The ground conditions were pretty ropey and there was, for
a long time, the idea of using a ground bearing slab, but that needed a lot of work and was ditched as it would have been
continued on page 11
© BDP
Opposite: The new school under construction Above: The roof area being built next to the old school
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