Dining Courtyard
Ralph Allen School, Bath
Ralph Allen School is a coeducational comprehensive secondary school, located in the village of Combe Down which lies within the Bristol and Bath Greenbelt, a World Heritage Site and the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Our brief was to create a simple to maintain, robust and nurturing landscape for the students to easily navigate—shaped by desire lines that reflected how the space was instinctively used.
Collaborating with architects Feilden Fowles on the masterplan for the whole school, we aimed to unify and add to the existing landscape work. As part of this, the Dining Courtyard is a new outside space for the students to use for relaxing, meeting or picnicking, inspired by nature and the surrounding woodland and meadows.
Status
Completed Summer 2021
Client
Ralph Allen School, Bath
Architect
Structural & Civil Engineer
Momentum Structural Engineers
M & E Engineer
e3 Consulting Engineers
QS & Project Management
Peter Gunning & Partners
Main Contractor
H Mealing & Sons
Photography
Jim Stephenson
Response to Site
We worked with the school to understand the natural movement of students around the landscape and used this information to shape the design.
Materials in Use
The landscape budget was small so we adapted our design throughout the process to make the most of materials generated from the wider building construction works. Along with ‘Jenga’ timber benches, we used reclaimed Bath stone to create seating areas and to reinforce the desire lines.
Plants in Use
Meadow landforms defined movement through the space, with species-rich sitting lawns introduced on the southern banks. We used native trees found in the surrounding hedgerows to create a woodland character when entering the space. The woodland then gradually dissipated into the meadow and lawn landscape around the new dining hall. The edges of the site were planted with wild roses and seeded with a native meadow.
