Dunraven School Sports Centre

The sports hall building is an Intermediate works project which forms part of Lambeth’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme. Although the project budget could possibly have been met through a very basic, traditional steel portal frame building, such a design would not have been acceptable to either the client BSF team, to the funding body Partnership for Schools or to Lambeth Planning Department.

Following numerous cost appraisals of more traditional designs, the design team introduced an innovative solution of using thirty re-cycled shipping containers as the primary structure – which would in addition also provide much of the cladding solution.

The entire primary building structure is recycled. This whole structure is thus also demountable and recyclable, and the design ensures that it can quickly be dismantled and removed from site if required for relocation.

Much of the works required to adapt the individual units also took place off-site over a period of 4 months. This controlled and minimised waste and reduced the need for construction traffic to the site and also allowed the school to function undisturbed. All thirty containers were delivered to site and craned into place to complete the primary structure and main cladding for the building over the course of three days. In total, site works lasted approximately 5 months (2 of these being for ground works) with fabrication of the building structure off-site taking place during the same period.