Track Record/Hackney

Education/Hackney/Listed Building/ Planning Consent for School

Princess May School in Hackney is a Board School, built in exuberant style in 1900 by architect Thomas Jerram Bailey with Dutch gables and Art Nouveau flourishes and named after Queen Mary (1867 to 1953) who was informally known as Princess May and who married the future George V in 1893, around the time the houses in Princess May Road were built.

In 1968 the architects for the Inner London Education Authority added a pre-fabricated “CLASP” system toilet block which not only looks out of place, but blocks the main entrance axis.

HEAT have won planning consent to remove this block and replace it with an airy new glazed entrance to the school, which will transform the access and visibility of the school in the community. We are relocating all the admin functions of the school to this new entrance block which will be clad in water-jet cut Corten steel (Steel that rusts immediately and forms a protective layer). The oxide red will pick up the soft red colours of the original brickwork. In their assessment Hackney Council commented: “The design proposed, within the constraints of the site and the budget, is felt to be an imaginative and attractive solution.”

Project 169

Won/24.02.16