Wapping High School
Client design advice
Wapping High School is a new secondary (free) school. Established by the Wapping and Shadwell Secondary Education Trust, a not for profit organisation run by parents and local residents, its aim is to offer a personalised curriculum to a diverse East London community. As new clients, the Trust wanted specialist advice to ensure a successful project, particularly given the complexity of the building procurement process.
We worked with the Trustees to develop a comprehensive educational design brief and to define a set of priorities to ensure that capital investment was focused on aspects that would promote learning outcomes. We facilitated visits to other schools, researched design precedents and led a scenario-testing workshop to test the scheme against the educational design priorities, and to allow for any necessary refinements before the project was submitted for planning approval. We collaborated with the whole project team, and supported the fast-paced process.
Our client said that AMA’s advice ‘enabled us to lead rather than be led, and I believe this will result in us achieving better value for money in the final design.’