Ruyton Girls School - Margaret McRae Building

With a focus on collaboration and individuality, the building provides students with technology-rich, interactive spaces. These include a mix of formal and informal learning spaces - a dedicated base for year 7 and 8 girls, science, drama and event facilities. The spaces are based on the concepts of transparency, mobility, adaptability and student-centeredness. The rooms have mobile furniture, allowing for maximum flexibility and an emphasis on collaboration.

Internal glazing creates transparency between classrooms and the break-out space, doubling as an informal space for small group activities. The form and materiality is inspired by the medieval buildings of the Ruyton XI towns of which the school is named. The building is clad in stone pavers, which have been adapted for use as a rain-screen cladding system. This maintains the solidity of the surrounding brick buildings, while providing contrast in terms of scale, colour, vertical orientation, and sculptural form.

Transforming the site into a dynamic offering for students and staff, the design sees a move away from traditional classroom planning framework where desks are lined in rows and a teacher educates from the front, to a model that prioritises natural light, flexible furniture and technology-enabled teaching and learning. The new building has elevated the campus with architecture and integrated interiors facilitating learning in a digital age, with a variety of spaces for task-based, student-centred flexible learning.

With a clear focus on personalised learning, the school’s approach exemplifies the shift towards student-centred learning where collaboration, creativity and critical thinking are all essential components. Architecturally, the structure has a softness to the form as well as the materiality. A complex sculptural form, there are two wings to the building. Circulation around the floorplate has been designed to be fluid, with the main circulation space highlighted by curtain walls that bring the flow of the breakout space of the main courtyard and link to a tennis court on the east side of the building.

Ruyton Girls School

Woods Bagot