Haileybury Astana School | Cinici Architects

Haileybury, one of the Britain’s oldest and most prestigious independent boarding schools, has its Astana Campus situated on a 12 hectares site, with 20 000 m2 closed area. There were three challenges while developing the design idea of this campus: the vast and flat layout of the city, the complexity of the program and the climatic conditions.

The challenge of complexity aroused its counterpart, simplicity, as the main design strategy. The four parts of the school programme (Pre-school, KS1, KS2, Senior School) each having unique spatial requirements, are resolved into one comprehensive unity: the square.

An understanding of a “generic section” that responds to the heavy mechanical and electrical requirement as well as programmatic complexities is developed responding to the climatic conditions.

After all, surprisingly, the rebirth of the archetypal “Courtyard” witnessed – as an unintended reference to the original Haileybury in UK. In a vast city like Astana, which is in the process of development and pervaded by extreme flatness, this two store, low-rise building, devoid of historic and iconic references, offered its own vastness and horizontality as a reverence to the city.