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Schools Landscape Design Award
Grounds for Optimism is an innovative new landscape design award scheme aimed at secondary schools, launched last September across
Grounds for Optimism is about engaging students in ‘Blue Skies’ thinking about their school grounds; taking them through a carefully planned process of analysis, exploration and consultation enabling them to create design solutions for their grounds. Grounds for Optimism is not just about transforming space; taking part will also transform learning. The project was in 3 stages: bronze, silver and gold.
Participating chools submitted designs for the bronze award and 7 were selected to go forward to the silver award phase. The standard was very high and the ideas submitted were diverse and innovative. The student teams each then worked with a professional landscape architect who guided them in developing and refining their ideas to produce a final design which was a result of many months of hard work talking with fellow students, teachers and governors, and a great deal of research, photography, drawing and brain storming. The Gold Award event took place at the Lightbox Theatre, Woking on 29th June. Each team had to produce 3 exhibition boards illustrating their design and the process they took to realise it, and then gave a presentation to a panel of judges including TV gardner Sven Wombwell. The silver award schools were: Bay House School, Gosport; Hounsdown School, Southampton; Testwood School, Southampton; King James’ School, Knaresborough; St Anne’s Convent School & College, Southampton; Wood Green School, Witney.
Many landscape architects practices volunteered to take part in assisting the schools, and those who worked with the silver award student teams were:
GOLD AWARDS
Testwood and Hounsdown Schools win top design awards
Students from Testwood Sports College and Hounsdown School in Totton, Southampton are celebrating their top awards in the schools grounds design challenge ‘Grounds for Optimism’.
(click on the images to see them full size)
Testwood won the Gold Award for their proposals for an open air classroom, while Hounsdown’s scheme to revive their school entrance area captured the Green Award. Organiser Mark Drury of the Solent Centre for Architecture + Design (SCA+D) was delighted at the outcome: “More than 100 schools took part in the competition - because school grounds are so often the poor relation of school design and we wanted to inspire fresh thinking to help schools recognise what a priceless asset they can be.”
Six schools reached the “Dragons’ Den” style final where the students had to present their proposals to the judging panel, chaired by Neil Williamson, President of the Landscape Institute, one of the partner organisations supporting the scheme, and which included TV gardener and landscape designer Sven Wombwell.
“The whole day just blew me away,” says Sven. “The schools’ professionalism was outstanding - the background and research they’d gone through was as good as any design company.”
Testwood decided that they would create an outdoor learning area, complete with a quiet area overseen by a statue of Buddha for religious studies, a theatrical space for al-fresco drama studies as well as moveable seats for class group learning - especially in science - and even closed off areas for one to one tutorial sessions. All would be surrounded by planting, a meadow area and wildlife habitats. The College have won the GfO Gold trophy and 3D CAD software presented by Computers Unlimited worth over £3,000.
Ian Appleton, Headteacher at Testwood was thrilled: “It’s a credit to our Year 8 students and their teacher, Kate Ireland, who have all put in a tremendous amount of work, energy and enthusiasm throughout the project. The award means a lot to them and, more importantly, the results of their work will be a benefit to all Testwood students.”
In their presentation, the Hounsdown students took a very critical look at their school entrance area, declaring it was unimaginative, uninspired and dull. Their answer was lots of colourful, wildlife friendly plants, seating in different shapes and sizes made from natural materials and garden sculptures made by their fellow students from the Arts Department. The attention given to maintenance, choice of materials and planting, and a highly creative presentation were key factors in persuading the judges to give Hounsdown the Green Award, with the prize of Sustainability and Renewals Report from carbon engineers XCO2 Energy worth over £5,000.
“Testwood’s design was excellent,” says Sven, “but what really impressed me was the quality of the process they followed. And to win the Green Award, Hounsdown had thought of everything to maximise biodiversity - even down to longevity, starting an afterschool gardening club to look after the area and carrying out a wildlife study.”
Project Leader at Hounsdown, Chris Stokes, said winning the Green award was fantastic: “After the presentations, we thought we were pretty good but not the best, so we were as chuffed as punch to win. GfO is a great idea – we’ve wanted to make more of our grounds for years and so it was a great project for us. What made me really proud, though, was that the students really drove this themselves, making all the decisions and coming up with a brilliant solution.”
It is hoped that the competition will go nationwide next year. Chairman of the Judging Panel, Neil Williamson, says: “What excited me was that it draws together environmental design thinking and education, putting students firmly in the driving seat and enabling them to develop their skills with advice and guidance from landscape professionals. GfO absolutely deserves to go national and I shall be doing everything I can to encourage it.”
The Silver Award Finalists were:
St Annes Catholic School, Southampton
Wood Green School, Witney, Oxford
Bay House School, Gosport
King James School, Harrogate
The following videos show the presentations made by each of the schools. You will need to have the latest version of Flash Player installed to view the videos: http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/welcome/
Bay House School, Gosport
Hounsdown School, Totton, Southampton
King James School, Harrogate, North Yorkshire
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