With the brief to create a building that neither looked nor felt like a school, Aedas Architects designed the high profile school in west London.
The school building with its unusual façade, is wrapped with an undulating skin of bronze and copper fins that extend along its western façade and over the roof to engulf the building.
To the east elevation, the fins give way to a curved brise soleil made of 2,200 m² of architectural wire mesh by Haver & Boecker.
The wave-like wire mesh cladding made of architectural weave type EGLA-MONO softens the geometry of the building and creates an effective aesthetic sun protection screen in front of the classrooms. This transparent façade allows unobstructed views from inside the classrooms and reflects the sunrays to protect the interior from overheating.
The stainless steel wire mesh cladding extends over the entire length of the building and seems to exist optically out of three horizontal wire mesh bands.
Each band consists of several vertically tensioned wire mesh elements of widths from 1.50 m to 2 m and heights of 3 m to 6.50 m. On the corners pre-curved wire mesh elements were used to implement the round geometry of the façade.
