Project
Houlton School
The RIBA Award winning Houlton Secondary School is an ambitious and transformative new project. It is a central fixture in a major new development of Houlton, on the outskirts of Rugby which this year won RIBA’s first ever Reinvention Award.
The centrepiece of the project is the listed C-Station building, which served as a transmission hub throughout the 20th century and played a key role in the development of worldwide communication.
The re-imagining of C Station involves the refurbishment of the existing radio station building into the primary structure of a new educational campus, which will serve as the secondary school as well as one of the centrepieces for the new urban development. The new school will be one of several serving a new community and fulfils the dual purpose of providing the new educational facility as well as securing the future of the listed radio station building.
Another key design goal was to make C-Station an important part of the new housing community, by ensuring the demands of community use events are met by the fire safety provisions.
"OFR provided fire strategy advice for the whole school site as well as providing fire strategy services for individual building plots. The key challenges of the project were cantered around achieving a creative design which complements the historic elements of the existing structure while also providing a flexible and safe school environment, with the capacity to serve the educational needs of the new development."
Architect
Developer
Gross project value
£32m
Project type:
Did you know?
2023 was the first ever year in which the RIBA presented its RIBA Stirling Prize for Reinvention, recognising buildings that have been creatively reused to improve their environmental, social, or economic sustainability