Lycée International de Londres Winston Churchill

The successful transformation of the Grade II Listed former Brent Town Hall into a new Lycée, for 1,070 students provides the highest quality educational facilities to meet the growing need for places in London.

Our challenge as the design architects was to remodel the grand spaces within the listed building and to create the more informal and flexible school environment, whilst respecting the Listed nature of the building. The brief also required an element of new-build to accommodate specialist classrooms, and a fully catered restaurant to serve the entire school in three sittings. Major design issues related to resolving access and entrances, the internal circulation related to the pedagogical needs of Maternal, College and Lycée and the degree of connectivity between the new and existing spaces.

The concept focuses on well proportioned, balanced accommodation, with the emphasis on excellent day-lit teaching spaces. The completed design provides a close integration of the new to the outside, landscaped spaces within a stepping 2 and 3 storey L shaped teaching block, which follows the site topography to the rear of the existing Listed Building. The combined buildings provide approximately 12,500m2 internal area within a generously landscaped campus setting of around 5.3 hectares.

The project progressed as a Design and Build Contract, built by Bouygues UK with LSI as executive architects. The completed Lycée International de Londres Winston Churchill opened for the beginning of 2015 academic year and was inaugurated by President Francois Hollande.