"I think the new school looks amazing" That's how Year 10 pupil Liz, describes Southwell's new £34 million Minster School.Thorn, through its relationships with architects Penoyre & Prasad, consultants Buro Happold and electrical contractors, J.M. Morris, has played a major part in lighting the college, which specialises in Music and Humanities and shares its facilities with the local community outside of school hours.
The lighting team has achieved a flexible design to match the functions, and their particular moods, taking place in the school – lectures, studying and socialising, as well as the shared theatre, recital room, main hall, café and sports halls.
Outstanding feature of the scheme is the central covered "street", which supports areas for independent learning, as well as gatherings of the whole school community (its dimensions are taken from the width of the nave in Southwell Minster, where the school was founded over 1000 years ago). Lighting of the double height space is by triple clusters of cylindrical surface downlights (Cairo 1x42W TC-TEL), combined with lines of digital dimmable fluorescents with asymmetric reflectors (1500mm 35W T5 Arrowslims), set above the perimeter walls. The lighting is pleasantly subdued with no glare and supplements the skylights and clerestory glazing.
However, it is the classrooms with their suspended ‘luminaire rafts', which provide the scheme with its most striking lighting motif. The ‘rafts' use hidden Arrowslim fittings, again with asymmetric reflectors, to deliver an indirect component to the ceiling and Corsa 200 downlights - some with wall washing optics - for direct lighting of the workspaces and whiteboards. To maximise energy efficiency, the luminaires employ a mix of 35W T5 and 26W TC-DEL lamps respectively. Lighting is controlled by a Thorn SensaLink system, designed on the old adage "rely on occupants to turn lights on, but not to turn them off". It comprises of recessed mounted presence detectors addressing groups of digitally enabled luminaires, controlled via local two button wall plates. The beauty of the system is twofold. The staff are able to adjust their own personal lighting to suit the conditions, and if any of them leaves the lights on, the system detects absence and switches them off. No central controller or complicated operating system is required.
The theme of triple clusters of downlights was extended into the school's main assembly hall. Indeed, the design team used three-dimensional computer image visualisations (AGI32) to allow the client and architect to see how the proposed lighting of the "street" and assembly hall would work before any of the actual construction began.
Other Thorn lighting at Minster School includes modular Elevation Premier fluorescents in the ICT (Information and Communications Technology) areas, l.v downlights in the music rooms, emergency lighting, and suspended Primata II trunking - configured in squares and complete with spotlights - to illuminate the Art Studio. The sites' sports lighting is looked after, internally, by T5 fluorescents and, externally, with low glare 2kW floodlights.
The result is a new generation of educational building. Imaginative use of the latest lighting equipment has created an extremely pleasant environment in which to study and play, while the lighting design is both aesthetically pleasing and energy conscious.
