Nairn Academy

Architects - Reiach and Hall Architects

Service Engineers - Etive Consulting Engineers

Landscape Architects - Rankin Fraser

Billing Client - Balfour Beatty

Fire Engineer - Atelier Ten

Mechanical Engineer - Rybka

The new, passivhaus certified school will replace the existing Nairn Academy building, on the same site located on the southern edge of Nairn town. It caters for students aged 11-18, with a capacity of 760 people and serves a mix of urban and rural catchment areas. Existing external features such as the sports pitches and orchard are to be retained and re-used. The local community will have access to the sports facilities and learning resource centre.

The compact design of 3 stories, wrapped around an atrium, the dining hall and open plan LRC and learning plazas has classically proportioned facades and a pitched roof. Colour is applied to the simple, vertical solar shading fins to support the architectural strategy and to reflect warm light into the classrooms.

Set in extensive grounds, the building is treated as a pavilion in a parkland and references large, symmetrical houses and institutional buildings of the Georgian era. The building faces in every direction. The compact plan is wrapped around a south facing courtyard and has a simple ‘A’ shaped circulation diagram. The building grid and depth of plan were generated through consideration of creating a compact plan and enabling generous levels of daylight whilst minimising the ratio of corridor to room.

The repetitious language of the façades with vertically orientated windows is  derived from classical public buildings. Vertical aluminium shading fins help to prevent glare and overheating on the south, east and west facades, and adopt a colour strategy that supports the functional aspects of the design while reinforcing its compositional qualities.  A dual colour palette is used with one part relating to areas where it is beneficial to shade glazing from direct sunlight and the other performing a reflective function in relation to indirect north light. The former (generally south facing) planes of the relevant fins/brise soleil are proposed as a dark toned green/blue range which read predominantly tonally dark but vary in hue while the latter (generally north facing) planes are in a series of pale yellows which read as the same hue with nuanced only tonal variation.

The coloured fins orientate the building in terms of how applied colour is used, introducing light, warm colour as the building is viewed from the north and stronger vertical accents when viewed from the south, these aim to strengthen the architectural image in the horizontally orientated surrounding context. Within each colour group, tonal or hue shifts between individual fin elements are randomised in a way that consciously avoids a repeat pattern yet retains rhythm and variation that aims to subtly animate the rigorous grids of the facades.