Newcastle College to add bold new sixth form academy to campus
Newcastle College has announced the next development of its ongoing £160 million investment in campus facilities. The latest addition is a new sixth form academy providing a completely wire-free, state-of-the-art home for over 2,000 students and staff. The new development will sit alongside the college’s multi award-winning Performance Academy and the landmark Lifestyle Academy, just two of the contemporary and innovative buildings on the college’s city centre campus.
A working model created by the RMJM team
International architects RMJM have been commissioned to design the sixth form academy. It will be the practice’s fifth building for Newcastle College since 2002. As with RMJM’s previous projects for the college, the design will challenge convention and continue to build on the college’s new and unique identity. The sixth form academy will offer 12,000m2 of highly specialised facilities from performance studios and visual arts suites to teaching laboratories.
The building is peppered with round windows of varying size, allowing a glimpse of the activity within and allowing natural ventilation of the building
RMJM Director Adrian Boot commented: “Our proposals for Newcastle’s sixth form academy are quite a departure from traditional sixth form buildings. In addition to the very specialised facilities, the building will contain fully-wired general teaching spaces making the college highly flexible and allowing the creation of innovative teaching environments of varying size.”
The sixth form college sits as part of the family of contemporary developments on the campus
At the heart of the academy is a new type of learning space. Branded ‘The Hive’, the multi-storey social and learning hub will provide a variety of flexible and informal spaces for students to engage with the learning process outside of the traditional classroom. From intimate internet cafes to international classrooms, students and teachers can collaborate from across the building and around the world thanks to the latest in wireless technology.
The sixth form building will have a unique identity on Newcastle’s campus and will join the family of contemporary landmarks created by RMJM over the past six years. The project is the first international collaboration between RMJM’s UK and US offices, using global design trends to achieve a confident building that is a statement of educational excellence. One of the first steps for the collective design team and the college will be to travel to the USA to visit and benchmark the aspirations for the sixth form academy against the latest in educational developments.
Construction is due to start in February of 2009 and the college is scheduled to open in September 2010.
Newcastle College Sixth Form Academy info from RMJM in 2008
Newcastle College Sixth Form : images released Nov 2008
Newcastle College Sixth Form Academy architects - RMJM
Newcastle Dance City
Other RMJM College Buildings:
Fife College
Lauder College
Newcastle College
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images from RMJM Architects
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Newcastle College Building : page - adrian welch / isabelle lomholt