The new science block building at Lord Wandsworth College, Hampshire, was designed as part of wider masterplan proposals to rationalise the existing campus with a landscape-led urban design strategy.

The building is designed to provide new science laboratories for secondary school children and 6th formers. Many of the existing buildings on the campus are brick-built with generously proportioned tiled roofs incorporating mansards. The science block design draws from these proportions, through the emphasis of the roof-scape. The use of modern zinc panels, in a tonal red-brown is sympathetic to the weathered tiles on adjacent roofs.

The laboratories require significant ventilation to cater for fume cupboards and the use of bunsen burners for chemistry in particular. This is expressed in the zinc-clad ventilation stacks that divide up the roof-scape. Driven by sustainable design principles, the building features clerestory windows at high level, allowing light and ventilation in to the central atrium.

The science building creates a new courtyard flanked by old and new phases of development that reflect on each other without imitation. The landscape-led masterplan creates a tree lined boulevard and open vista through the length of the building, and out to views of the open countryside beyond.