In December 2020 funding for the project to replace East Calder Primary School was approved through the Scottish Government’s Learning Estate Investment Programme. The existing East Calder Primary School is to be replaced with a new facility which will offer an enhanced learning and teaching experience for 462 children, appropriate external pitch provision, a diverse range of external play spaces and environments. The project will also have a total complement of 65 staff with appropriate parking facilities.

The key objectives are to develop the project brief, and to consider project and sustainability outcomes, quality aspirations and spatial requirements alongside the project budget. The design proposals have collaboratively evolved, currently at RIBA Stage 4 and are well advanced.
 
West Lothian Council’s project vision for the East Calder Primary School is driven by the desire to create a genuinely high-quality proposal providing a stimulating and dynamic learning environment based on tangibly good value through efficient design. This aspiration is shared by our design team led by NORR. In developing the proposal, our team has actively sought to fully realise the expectations and aspirations of West Lothian Council, their staff and each of the stakeholders involved.

Low Energy Design

Four key principles shape NORR’s specific approach to sustainable design, which we seek to apply at every stage of a school project:

• Comfort – Provide the optimal conditions for a healthy, productive environment for living, learning and play through a low energy approach to design based on the principles of adaptive comfort embodied in the project with an excellent form factor.
• Carbon – A low carbon solution, optimising the balance between the cost of emissions of initial construction with low operational emissions over the building’s lifetime, placing passive design principles and energy demand reduction measures ahead of reliance on complex, costly and sometimes unreliable renewable energy technologies.
• Cost – Minimum financial cost of initial procurement, balanced with predictable and managed future cost in use to deliver best whole life value.
• Creativity – Combine all the above elements into an inspiring and genuinely stimulating work of architecture.
 
In pursuing such goals, the adoption of a form with an excellent external wall to floor area ratio is not just thermally efficient and intrinsically sustainable, it is also conducive to best value.

Wider Social Benefits
 
The establishment of an effective design which will help to deliver local and national priorities not simply in academic terms but also in other key areas such as social and health strategies, all in accordance with West Lothian Council’s wider aspirations.