Westminster City School

Westminster City School is part of Westminster City Council’s £152 million Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme.

The strategy behind its transformation was to create a centre for community engagement and lifelong learning, and to enable the school to provide an enhanced curriculum. We created an attractive school campus, designed by Anshen and Allen, with a strong community presence, a confident identity, diverse external spaces, light-filled public areas, and modern learning facilities.

Originally, the school consisted of six buildings, totalling around 7,143m². The school was constrained in what it could offer, due to the age of its buildings and the restrictions of the site. Our new build added a further 2,166m² over four floors, enabling pupil numbers to increase from 777 to 850.

The new area provided a new main school reception; ICT suites; improved sixth form provision; a sports hall and changing area; a conference centre; a drama studio; a music department; roof gardens and staff offices. With the new building at the front of the school, facilities are easily accessible for the community, and have improved the school’s integration with local residents.

The tight inner city site required innovative design solutions. To fulfil the school’s requirement for a full-size sports hall, we created the facility one storey below ground – a feat of design and construction, given the proximity of London’s District Line tube tunnel, as well as two further site boundaries.

The school has a number of sustainable features, and has achieved a BREEAM rating of ‘Very Good’. The brown roof encourages growth of wild flora, the primary source of water heating is via 15m² of solar thermal panels, and an intelligent building control system eliminates unnecessary energy usage.

“From the beginning of the project, Bouygues UK has been very supportive, responding to requests from the school and doing all they can to work with us in managing what is a very difficult site,” said David Maloney, Head Teacher, Westminster City School.