RICS Social Impact Award - shortlisted
RIBA South Regional Award - shortlisted

The new school is the key public building at the heart of the community providing high quality architecture and social value. It has created a new character and sense of place and belonging in the town with a modern and cohesive learning environment for the current and future generations of children and families of Whitehill and Bordon.

Oakmoor School is a new 900 place replacement secondary school in the former garrison town of Whitehill and Bordon, Hampshire. Since the departure of the army in 2015, the planned regeneration of the town centre has started with the catalyst of significant investment in a new school at the heart of the new development. The school is the result of very positive and successful joint working between Hampshire County Council, East Hampshire District Council, the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, Whitehill & Bordon Regeneration Company, the Department for Education, the M3 LEP, Mill Chase Academy and the University of Chichester Academy Trust.

The new school sits within the wider regeneration programme with a vision to deliver a green, healthy and connected town by 2036, where residents are encouraged to live healthy and active lifestyles. The new school is about investing in people and creative placemaking, adding social value around a new centre for learning as well as making purposeful, calm and well considered architecture in and of itself.

Location: Whitehill and Bordon, Hampshire
Client: Hampshire County Council
Budget: £30m
Completed: July 2011
Project Team: HCC Property Services; Architects, Landscape Architects, Interior Design, M&E Services, Quantity Surveying, Structural, Civils and Building Inspectors. Acoustics: 24 Acoustics Ltd. Fire consultant: 3SFire. Landscape Feasibility: Coe Design. Main Contractor: Kier Construction. STP/MUGA Contractor: Blakedown Landscapes.

Oakmoor School courtyard

Responding to the mature woodland context and generally flat site, the school has been designed as a collegiate campus model with four separate buildings located around a central courtyard.

The courtyard is the social hub of the school community and the staircases provide easy access and further social space for the pupils. The palette of materials is simple, robust and low maintenance with facades used to optimise daylight into the classrooms and to allow passive surveillance for safeguarding. Throughout the campus there are views into the courtyard to the outside teaching spaces and to the surrounding woodland beyond.

The skills and responsiveness of Hampshire County Council’s Property Services team and the social impact of this project are undeniable. The building of Oakmoor, alongside the strong drive for educational improvement led by the school, has demonstrated a shared investment in the regeneration of Whitehill and Bordon.
- Sue Samson MBE Chief Executive Officer of the University of Chichester Academy Trust
Oakmoor School reception
Exterior of Oakmoor School at dusk
Oakmoor School classroom

Key Benefits:

  • The interior and exterior of the school has been designed to provide a diverse and flexible range of spaces in a contemporary teaching, learning, sporting and performance setting for teachers, students and the wider school community
  • The new state of the art school facilities have provided the staff and students with a new identity and a greater sense of pride in their school and community and as a result the new inspirational environment has raised educational aspirations for the school
  • The new school has been sustainably designed following low energy use, fabric-first principles, with optimised glazing to give views out to the courtyard and surrounding landscape which affords generous amounts of natural light into the spaces, improving health and well-being and reducing the building’s energy demand.