Stowe School
A top-class music facility for Stowe School
Stowe is famous for its Grade I listed English landscape garden, showcasing the finest eighteenth-century design innovation. Whilst providing a conservation statement for the gardens in 2011, Nick Cox Architects also designed a new music school for the setting. The project brings music teaching, practice and performance into a single building, serving 130 staff and pupils.
A modern design inspired by the historic landscapeĀ
Taking inspiration from the siteās history, we reinstated the circular shape of Leeās Bastion (a garden feature with a curved ha-ha which had lost definition over fifty years). The tripartite plan follows eighteenth-century symmetrical ideals, arranged around a central two hundred seat auditorium. Circulation between the modern buildings creates axial relationships to vistas within the landscape, in the spirit of the original vision for these exceptional gardens.Ā
The whole community under one historic roof
The expanding school population threatened the key vision for the 1925 Sir Robert Lorimer Chapel, which was designed to accommodate the whole school. Nick Cox Architects sensitively designed alterations allowing equal access. By enlarging the capacity of this historic space, it was once more able to fulfil its role as a place of congregation for the entire school community. The design has gained Listed Building Consent and was supported by the Twentieth-Century Society and Historic England.Ā Ā Ā