Learning from Schools is our ongoing research initiative dedicated to understanding how our education buildings perform in practice.
For our latest Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE), we returned to Abbeygate Sixth Form College in Bury St Edmunds. By integrating this research with our Access to Architecture mentoring programme, we invited the students themselves to become co-researchers, evaluating their school from both an architectural and environmental perspective. 5 years on from completion, the data revealed an interesting picture: 90% of users agreed the building’s materials and finishes remain in excellent condition, and 90% reported the building benefits from sufficient natural daylight.
Our POE approach is based around three interconnected ideas:
- By empowering students to measure and critique their own learning environments, we capture genuine, user-led insights.
- By combining qualitative user surveys with quantitative environmental data, we can begin to measure real-world building performance against predictive energy models.
- By transparently sharing out findings and lessons learnt, we continually drive improvements in our design work to deliver even better outcomes in the future.
The evaluation was led by plusZero, our in-house sustainability team, with Senior Architect Adriana Keast and Sustainability Designer Lucy Marsh guiding the environmental monitoring and data analysis.
The resulting report focuses on the Abbeygate campus, exploring vital themes including thermal comfort, daylighting, and spatial flexibility, revealing where design intentions have been successful and where students’ real-world experience challenged widely held industry guidance and assumptions. By revisiting completed projects, we aim to turn real-world insight into better schools for future generations.
Read the full report below.
