Chobham Academy | Allford Hall Monaghan Morris

Conceived pre-Olympics and used during the 2012 Games (as both a gym and a security hub), Chobham Academy continues to work hard as a linchpin educational and civic campus on the eastern edge of one of Europe’s largest regeneration projects.

Sited in the north-east corner of the former athletes’ village, Chobham Academy serves a pivotal role in attempting to redress the city’s long history of economic disparity between its east and west end boroughs. To the east lie the terraced streets of Leyton and Stratford, home to some of London’s most deprived wards, where over a third of children still live in poverty. Immediately to the west is the new East Village, a complex of ten storey apartment blocks set within a new public realm.

Designed as part of a strong new urban grain whose pattern is reflective of existing London streets, a central five-storey circular drum – with no back - marks the apex of a new grand axis. The drum faces the emerging community as well as the existing community and at the same time acts as the fulcrum for three connected buildings. A full-height atrium overlooked by open galleries on each floor defines the drum’s centre, whilst its perimeter is held in place by a two-storey rectilinear extrusion to the east and a two-storey serrated square volume to the west.
Outside, the predominantly self-finished and subtly-coloured façades are set within a playfully diverse landscape of land undulations, walls, ponds, catwalks and sculptures- as-seats. The All-Ages school – which opened to more than 1300 students aged 3-18 in September 2013 – serves Leyton, Stratford and the emerging community of the post- Games Park, both in and out of school hours. A new bridge connects the school to the neighbourhoods and playing fields on the other side of Temple Mill Lane.

Chobham Academy’s ambition is to provide a ‘place of exchange’ where the old and new east London comes together. The new buildings define space on a campus that is open, attractive, economical and sustainable.