Safe Schools for the Future is an initiative that helps and supports project teams in achieving consistent, high performance outcomes for health, energy, carbon and cost, with UK-timber primary schools.
New fire research, led by Architype Architects, and created with UCL, University of Edinburgh, and IGNIS, explores the conservativeness of current design for learning environments, and clarifies the benefits of a physics-based approach when creating high-performance, high-health, low-impact schools for the future.
This research, funded by the Forestry Commission under its Woods into Management Forestry Innovation Fund, demonstrates how timber frame construction, viewed through the lens of a simulated built case study, can be shown to be unaffected by internal fire scenarios.
These forward-looking insights have been paired with monitored in use health + wellbeing, and energy performance, and embodied carbon data of 17 completed primary schools across England, Scotland, and Wales. All of these buildings are timber frame construction, using a low-tech, high-performance assembly that is implementable at scale today and an ideal opportunity for meeting the Government’s ambition to increase the use of timber in construction for supporting the decarbonisation of the country.
Our panel of experts will share insights, best practices, and innovative strategies of the design guide.
