This project for a new boarding house was completed in 2025 and continues our 20-year relationship with Brentwood School, creating a welcome addition to the campus. The brief consolidates boys’ and girls’ accommodation, previously located on separate sites, expanding the current capacity of 65 to over 120 boarders. 

At the southern entry point to Brentwood and overlooking Shenfield Common, the facilities create a much-improved social experience for boarders, focusing on issues of wellbeing through well-designed environments. The building integrates 123 study bedrooms, all with en-suite shower facilities, alongside a communal dining room, kitchens, separate staff accommodation and dedicated landscaped social space.

The new block was built to exacting environmental standards. Underneath the brick skin, a composite structure was adopted to reduce overall embodied carbon: CLT was used to form the cellular study bedrooms of the upper storeys while a concrete podium slab spans the larger communal spaces at ground floor level. This approach was echoed in the building services which are fossil fuel free, utilizing mechanical ventilation and heat recovery throughout, with air-source heat pumps served from a separate curved brick energy station formed adjacent.