Varied lengths and widths of Marley Eternit’s Anthracite Natura Plus through-coloured panels clad the exterior and upper levels of three rectangular administration blocks, containing a hall, sports hall, dining room and offices, at Wilkinson Eyre’s prototype John Madejski Academy.
Natura Plus was also used to clad the academy’s heart, an unheated ETFE covered street, which links the administration blocks at ground and first floor levels with four distinctive wedge-shaped learning clusters. These act as schools within a school, each with classrooms around the perimeter and double-height central spaces with ICT and social areas.
Stafford Critchlow of Wilkinson Eyre, the architects on this project, explains: “We specified Natura Plus on the central facilities buildings and the rear façade of the learning clusters as it enabled us to unify the suite of buildings, allowing them to be viewed as a single composition. Natura Plus provided a practical, durable, flexible and economic design solution for both the external and internal cladding requirements.”
Based on Wilkinson Eyre’s ‘kit of parts’ design for an exemplar school as part of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme, the John Madejski Academy was developed using a design and build contract and was the first of the ‘exemplar’ designs to be built in the UK.
Built on the five-hectare site of the former Thamesbridge College in South Reading, it was sponsored by John Madejski, owner of Reading Football Club, and not surprisingly has a sporting specialism for its 1,100 students.
Natura Plus cladding is a smooth and solid cladding panel with a pure, through-coloured core and natural fibre cement finish. The subtle textural quality of the panels created an aesthetically pleasing, yet tough and practical cladding solution for the school.
Natura Plus cladding is suitable for a wide range of high quality façade applications and has an installed life expectancy of at least 50 years. It is available in a wide choice of colours.