The Edinburgh office of international design practice Scott Brownrigg has received planning approval for the design of Stoneywood School in Aberdeen.

Received on behalf of Aberdeen City Council, the school is funded through the Council's five-year Capital Programme and consists of a high-quality two stream primary school and 60 place nursery and will be located on the site of the former Bankhead Academy.

Scott Brownrigg was appointed under a traditional contract to lead on the new school’s design following an open competition, and stiff opposition from a number of UK practices.

The design for the new state-of-the-art school building will deliver a modern, congenial and healthy learning and working environment for the primary and pre-school stages. Teaching will be spread across 16 classrooms, each with direct access to the external landscape and flexible teaching areas. Sports provision includes a 3G synthetic pitch.

The school design has been developed around a school heart concept, with a series of restrained and elegant ‘lantern’ teaching pavilions surrounding the core community and assembly spaces. Each pavilion is centred with a large top lit activity space encircled by classroom teaching spaces. Every teaching space opens out directly to the external teaching environment.

The school is clad with natural aggregated cladding, larch timber cladding and zinc roofing, nestling within a mature tree lined site. The school building is contained within a sensitively designed landscape environment, learning and play space, amphitheater seating areas and woodland walks.

Following a successful procurement process, the project will start on site in early January 2017. The project team includes, Fairhurst Structures, TUV-SUD, Wardell Armstrong Landscape and Faithful and Gould acting as QS and will be constructed by Morgan Sindall Construction.

Director of Scott Brownrigg’s Edinburgh office, Alex Donaldson said of the approval: “We are delighted to receive approval for our design of the new Stoneywood School. This high profile project adds to the increasingly strong portfolio of work being delivered out of the Edinburgh office. Aberdeen City Council certainly has a clear vision and our team are looking forward to working closely with the Council, the key stakeholders and Morgan Sindall Construction to ensure this vision becomes a reality”.