The Poole Music School design is situated between Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre and Merck house office building. The school seeks to create a working and learning environment that coexists with that of a exhibition centre, where parents and members of the community can come to enjoy performances by the students in the same way the neighbouring lighthouse does. This dual function works by restricting the public to the ground floor, where performances happen, and leaving the first and second floors to be for students and staff only. This is achieved with a front atrium entrance on the ground floor, whereas the rear second floor entrance leads to classrooms, practice rooms and a staircase to the third floor of similar rooms.

 

This design is very technically heavy and features designs for box-in-box construction of a lecture theatre, practice rooms and recital rooms that ensure sound-proofing between rooms. Technology has also been employed in the form of large ventilation ducts to reduce noise, acoustic wall panels to reduce reverberance and passive heating where possible to avoid noisy systems. 

 

Theory work accompanied the design, taking precedence from Le Corbusier’s La Tourette, and analogues were drawn between the designs of golden sections in Gothic cathedrals and how they complimented the music played within them by their acoustics. It is from this that once can see golden triangles within the composition of the music school.