Kawneer systems help new school get a BREEAM “Excellent” report

Glazing systems from leading architectural aluminium supplier Kawneer have helped a new £24million school to achieve a BREEAM “Excellent” rating.

Two types of Kawneer’s curtain walling are complemented by AA®601TE top-hung casement and AA®601TE parallel opening windows as well as AA®605 low/medium-duty swing doors and series 10D light/medium-duty commercial entrance doors at The Grange School in Runcorn.

Just a few miles from Kawneer’s production facility, the new school features the Kawneer systems, including AA®100 and AA®110 zone-drained curtain walling, with 50mm and 65mm sightlines respectively, throughout four two-storey wings located around a central “heart” space and public hub.

Designed by Aedas architects, who are regular specifiers of Kawneer systems, the in-situ concrete-framed building caters for 1,350 three to 16-year-olds and is shaped to provide learning zones that give identity to its various facilities.

A contiguous ribbon of flexible learning space wrapped around the central hub, it maximises natural daylight and ventilation, features that helped with its BREEAM rating.

The Kawneer systems, including rooflights above the central hub, were installed by specialist sub-contractor Anaco Systems for main contractor Galliford Try as part of the £50million Halton Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme.

Chris Le Flohic, senior technician with Aedas architects, said: “The Kawneer products were the best and met all the required criteria very well.

“It was the main feature in one location, the main entrance, and it was used to break up the brick façade. It interfaces very well with the other materials but that was one of the reasons it was chosen. It also forms an architectural feature to the library and staff room as it has an expressed noising cap.”