NVB Architects

It has been great seeing work start on our latest project for Channing School.   Since 2010, Heyne Tillett Steel has built a strong relationship with Channing School, an independent girls’ school in Highgate, and have worked with them on various buildings across the school sites. Reflecting on the buildings we have worked on with the school, these include: Sports Hall and Sixth Form Centre, with Buckley Gray Yeoman, completed 2014 Performing Arts Space, also with BGY, completed 2018 Channing Junior School, with Prime Meridian completed 2021   The most recent project involves the extension of Brunner House with NVB Architects to provide additional dedicated science and technology teaching spaces. The new extension to the building has exposed ribbed RC slabs at Ground and first floor and a double pitched roof formed using exposed glulam beams and columns. The existing building has been retained and incorporated into the new structure and a new basement formed just outside of existing foundation line, providing programme, cost and carbon savings.   The excavation has now been completed on site so we are looking forward to the building coming out of the ground in the coming months.

100 Work Experience Students We’ve come to the end of “work experience season” with another 8 students from schools across our area. We've also just passed the threshold of 100 students overall!! We know this is a valuable experience, which was further validated from a contact this summer from a former student from 2015, Will Barker. Will has now qualified as an “Arkitekt” in Denmark and let us know that "it was the best pre-Uni experience that I had" and that he “had such a great time, that it inspired me to study architecture at Uni. Nine years later, I am now a qualified arkitekt in Denmark!” Will’s work is featured in the sample of the student work in the image grid. These date back to 2009 with 3D views produced in SketchUp with the transition to Revit adding Enscape in more recent years, although hand-drawing is still the start for all their designs, as it is ours. We particularly love it when students find the libraries within these programmes as they lead to some brilliantly irreverent results as you’ll see. The work experience programme we run gives a taste of the world of work as well as specifically into architecture and landscape design. We’re always impressed by the speed with which students pick up the skills, working through hand drawing, research and multiple software programmes all in one week. We've included one such result in the link below which was one of our landscape architecture projects. This was based on an existing school courtyard in need of some TLC. This brought together our specialism in education design with a space that the students identify with, understanding the constraints as well as the possibilities. We're excited for the next 100 students to join us, to teach us something from their standpoints and for us to be part of their journey. https://lnkd.in/efQNkY5e

Our landscape team celebrated the ground-breaking at Stanmore College by BOUYGUES UK for the Department for Education last week. The project is a significant investment in further education for the London Borough of Harrow. It will redevelop 3/4 of the site focusing new and existing buildings on a central courtyard as the new heart of the college. We can’t wait to see the works progress. #landscapearchitecture #educationdesign

Designing with empathy: The human-centred approach to architecture Last year, NVB Architects won BD’s Education Architect of the Year Award. Here, practice director James McGillivray expands on the practice’s mantra: if you don’t understand people, you cannot design for them

Building Design. have our director James McGillivray in print today reflecting on our approach to our work in the wake of winning Education Architect of the Year. https://lnkd.in/eAjzmY_4 #architecture

After 35 years at NVB we wished Bill Button a very happy retirement at the end of July. Since joining NVB in 1988, Bill has dedicated his time to the success of NVB.  For the last 23 years he has been instrumental in the development of the practice in his role as a director, whether involved in our International School work in the South East Asia, or steering us safely through the choppy waters of the pandemic.  He will be greatly missed not just for his skill as an architect and a leader but for his pastoral care for the whole NVB Team. Bill’s retirement is a significant moment in the life of NVB, but is part of a long term succession and development plan and we are delighted to announce the promotion of Jenny Hyden to Associate. Jenny joined us as landscape team leader when Peter Baker was promoted to Landscape Director two years ago and Jenny’s promotion is recognition of the contribution she makes to the practice as well as a significant enriching of the studio leadership. We wish Bill and his wife Kath (who retired on the same day as him) a very happy retirement and look forward to Jenny’s continued contribution to life at NVB. #architecture #landscapearchitecture #educationdesign

Say hi to Peter Baker if you're attending #IPSEF 2024:

"With many schools wanting to broaden their appeal to families with more wide-ranging aims for their children, the question is “how best to achieve this on a school campus with all the constraints familiar to independent schools?” While tweed, the sound of leather on willow and the recitation of Latin declensions is how independent schools are still portrayed in literature and film, we all know the reality is very different. In an increasingly competitive market, schools need to appeal to a cohort of parents who drive electric cars, put wellness at the heart of family life, nurture their children’s dreams of working in one of the many branches of media and technology both old and new and, (whisper it) don’t wear ties to work." Director James McGillivray writes on the smart use of the campus in this month's Independent Schools Magazine. https://lnkd.in/e4Tqr-6D #education #architecture #thoughtpiece

'In teaching buildings, three key considerations are internal air quality (nobody wants sleepy pupils), acoustics (reverberation and sound transfer), and balancing privacy and lack of distraction with child safeguarding'. NVB Architects Building Design.