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?

PRESTWICK ACADEMY, SOUTH AYRSHIRE BY RYDER ARCHITECTURAL

This is just deadly, isn't it? This is an academy, the pride of Britain's schools system. The academy programme has created a generation of buildings that by and large are made of render, in white and coloured panels, designed by terrible architects like Ryder who treat them like just another developer piece of shit.
Like this one, academies often have glassy atrims to try to look less forbidding and more democratic than Victorian schools, but usually end up looking like they should be on a low-rent business park somewhere in, er, Ayrshire.
I like to imagine what the conversation in the Ryder office was like when they chose where to put the yellow panels in the wing on the left hand side. 'No, a bit left.' 'Put three yellow bits in that one." "Move that one a bay to the right." "That's it! Perfect."
The public realm outside has been comprehensively galvanised, with only the bits of timber on the benches giving a hint of what might have been.

WOODLAND COMMUNITY PRIMARY SCHOOL, ROCHDALE BY NPS ARCHITECTS

FAT SHED WITH TINY WINDOWS. THAT'S WHAT WE SHOULD EDUCATE THE VERY YOUNG IN THESE DAYS. IF IT FAILS AS A SCHOOL, YOU CAN ALWAYS TURN IT INTO A FUCKING DISTRIBUTION SHED. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN, LIKE NPS, YOU HAVE A BOARD OF DIRECTORS WHO LOOK LIKE NEWS OF THE WORLD PAEDOPHILES.

FOREST WAY SEN SCHOOL, COALVILLE, LEICESTERSHIRE BY HUNTERS

You know how architects always tell their clients that the proposed timber cladding will 'weather down' into a shimmering grey colour? Well, they're lying. In this case it's Hunters' sweet chestnut cladding on a special needs school in Leicestershire, looking pretty ropey a few months after opening. Click on the picture for the close-up horror.
This school is sustainable. So sustainable, in fact, that trees grow inside the building!
This might be my first example on this blog of something that's so bad, it's good.

DAVINGTON PRIMARY SCHOOL, FAVERSHAM BY CATTELL SKINNER DESIGN PARTNERSHIP

I'm torn over this one. I think the architect tried hard. It's just an awful result. You can see what they were trying to do - some very small clerestoreys and banded brickword probably made them feel a bit like Jim Stirling. But it just ends up looking like a faux-postmodern lock up. I congratulate the photographer on waiting for sunny weather, but it doesn't make much difference, does it?