Digital Book of Landscapes 2020

Article

Alconbury school

Johnathan Hesketh
Project Landscape Architect

Atkins were appointed to provide landscape architecture, architecture and engineering services to Morgan Sindall on a £36m new education campus in Alconbury Weald, Cambridgeshire.

Our design helps bring together several individual buildings within a true campus, including a 600-place secondary school, 300-place sixth form and 130-place special needs free school.

This is a striking, high quality and sustainable design and central to the vision and design philosophy is the creation of a ‘Landscape for Learning’ in which all space, both internal and external, can be utilised and adapted to enhance the learning experience and learner participation.

Alconbury Education Campus will also form an important landmark in Cambridge, and sit adjacent to a civic square, which will connect the schools to the wider community. Positioned at the end of a former runway, it is envisioned to be a ‘beacon’ for the wider community.

The design is also testament to the effectiveness of new ways of working in the pandemic, developed as we entered into lockdown, at a time when it was completely alien to design from your dining room table and collaborate entirely virtually. We successfully adapted to a new way of working to discuss and explore our design approach.

Alconbury Education Campus is part of an Urban & Civic development comprising 5,000 new homes, a health centre and retail hub, sustainable transport links, and over 500 acres of green space, including a country park.