N E W S L E T T E R - Radley College

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THE OLD GYM The unimaginative title of this piece reflects both the antiquity of the site of Radley’s newest building project and the fact that it has not one but a number of functions, none of which is so overridingly important as to lay claim to its renaming. So the new building is not just the History Department, or the Art Gallery, or the Coffee Shop, but it is all of these, married together in a stunning concept – by the winners of our competition the architects, Design Engine. It is important to emphasise at the outset that we still await planning permission before Easter, but provided the planners’ dangerous shoals are successfully navigated this spring, we envisage getting underway with clearing the site in the high summer, with building commencing in the autumn. Realistically, we aim to be in by Easter 2013. That 60 to 70 weeks of building reflects the scale of this project. First it incorporates 10 new History (and Politics) classrooms, with accompanying offices, to accommodate one of the biggest departments in the school; over 130 boys take A level History, at present inadequately accommodated in a few beautiful old classrooms facing Bigside. Secondly, and at the building’s heart, is a Coffee Shop and Social Centre for senior boys, and their guests, and parents and visitors to sit in comfort, have a snack, and talk. We felt this need especially for weekends; as a full boarding school it is important to have a stylish social space for boys, visiting girls and adults to meet, especially on Saturdays and Sundays, and the design has imaginatively satisfied that need, additionally providing meeting rooms for more formal discourse. These social areas flow easily into the third element, the expanded Art gallery spaces, for we have long wanted to provide our Art 2 THE RADLEY NEWSLETTER 2 THE RADLEY NEWSLETTER
REDEVELOPMENT department and the beautiful, high quality Art emanating from it, with exhibition spaces which do justice to Radley’s artistic productivity. The Art will be both wrapped round the social spaces, and have discrete galleries of its own. Design, too, benefits from extended workshop and exhibition spaces. As a whole, this great new building will make a powerful statement in the heart of the College. There may have been some residual affection for the corrugated construction which morphed from 19th century chapel into Gym, then into Radley’s theatre space, but the shell has long since lost its usefulness, the new theatre superseding it in 2005. Now, an exciting new concept, enhancing the Rackets Court and setting off Clock Tower, will radically transform the centre of Radley College for the better. THE RADLEY NEWSLETTER 3 THE RADLEY NEWSLETTER 3
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N E W S L E T T E R - Radley College

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