MERLIN TOP PRIMARY SCHOOL, KEIGHLEY, YORKSHIRE BY RACE COTTAM ASSOCIATES

This is the image that Race Cottam presumably paid someone to create of the hideous new special needs school they have designed in Keighley. They had to pay for an image with dramatic sky and jolly looking children jumping up and down, because their own drawings look like this:

I suppose this image really shows how the strange bike-shed structures help the school relate to the landscape/car park that forms the compelling context that Race Cottam created for itself.

I also think that orangey brown and blue stripes speak to all of us so clearly of contemporary civic identity and our optimism about British education. They also have yellow and green stripes in some of the internal courtyards. Niiice.

I'd be interested to know how Race Cottam came up with the plan for this school. I'm guessing that the design process involved a late night game of Mikado or something. Anyway, Kalzip will be happy.

Race Cottam are one of those practices, that seem to appear a lot on BBA (this one, for instance), who get prizes from Building magazine for being a good employer. They're almost always bad architects aren't they?