Napier Boys’ new buildings for Science and English have replaced their end of life Armour Block. The school required separate classrooms, each accessed via external covered circulation spaces.

An extensive master planning exercise with the school and the Ministry of Education saw the buildings establishing purposeful teaching and learning spaces along with a more useful edge to their Quad - used year round for whole-of-school outdoor assemblies.

The English Block now opens onto this Quad with the ability to be used as a presentation stage, while the Science Block faces the school’s main playing field with a ‘DNA sequencing’ derived brise soleil that protects the classrooms from late morning solar heat gain.

Its Te Awa Avenue facade is also articulated to make the Science Block appear to be two stories - something that the school was keen to instigate, but programmatically unnecessary. Our design solution was a mono-pitched building with a roof rising towards the field edge - to appear as if it is two storey, even when it isn’t.