Corsham School, Wiltshire
Educational Development
Services: Landscape Design & Visualisation
The Landmark Practice was instructed to prepare a fresh landscape design to welcome students and visitors to a new arrival space as part of a new reception area for the SEND and Sixth Form blocks at Corsham School, Wiltshire.
Working closely with Alec French Architects, we created a simple and distinct series of landscape spaces with amenity and biodiversity value which complement the existing and proposed building uses and arrangement.
The brief from the school required an attractive scheme that responds to the existing school footprint, formal access points and the principal student routes in and around the new arrival space. The landscape scheme responded by setting out a number of key spaces:
- Reception arrival space to welcome visitors, staff and students
- Drop off zone
- Outdoor classrooms that link to internal classrooms
- External social spaces that link to the sixth form common room
- Quiet gardens linked to the SEND and sixth form study area
- Flexible event and gallery space within the entrance court
The design ensures permeability across the site to allow for the movement of students from the principal drop off zone to the north into the rest of the school grounds. A simple palette of hard and soft materials distinguishes the hierarchy of these movement routes throughout the new landscape planting and the distinct landscape spaces themselves.
Seating is integrated into low levels walls which define the edges of the formal lawns. Trees are positioned to offer shade whilst reinforcing boundaries to delineated drop off and arrival spaces. An intimate courtyard was created for SEND to provide a quiet and secluded space. Sensory planting and a simple timber fence assists in softening the spaces using natural materials and providing a sense of enclosure.
Client Benefits
Rendered visualisations were prepared to help to engage stakeholders with the design and inform the planning application. High quality landscape around the main arrival space was specified to maximise the impact of the landscape proposals and existing hard surface routes were retained wherever possible to fit with the design. Wildflower strips have been proposed where existing pathways were required to be removed to make best use of the poor fertility soil that remains. Landmark’s landscape team took advice from our in-house ecologists to ensure the proposed planting provides ecological benefits as well as amenity value to the scheme.
Working with:
Architect: Alec French Architects
