Location	Glasgow, Scotland
Date	2003-7
End User	54 students with multiple sensory impairments
Implementing Agency	Glasgow City Council
Design Firm	Alan Dunlop Architect Limited
Design Team	Maggie Barlow, Gordon Brown, Alan Dunlop, Fergal Feeney, Gordon Murray, Stacey Phillips
Engineer	Buro Happold
Landscape Architect	City Design Co-Operative
Quantity Surveyors	Thomas and Adamson
Contractor/Manufacturer	Sir Robert McAlpine
Funders	Glasgow City Council
Cost	£6.8 million/$13.6 million
Area	2666 sq m/29 622 sq ft

“Now we are saying that your children are so valuable that we are giving them a fantastic building.”

—Monica McGeever, head teacher

The new Hazelwood School for Children and Young People with Sensory Impairment is the only educational institution in Glasgow, Scotland, of its kind. Students may be blind and deaf, or they could be physically handicapped and struggle with a learning disability. “Our children are probably the most disabled children in Glasgow,” says Monica McGeever, the school’s head teacher. “When they were being schooled in [two] run-down buildings, that didn’t send a great message in terms of the value we put on children with disabilities.” In 2003, the Glasgow City Council decided to build a single school for young people with multiple sensory impairments. It was finally completed in 2007.

Architect Alan Dunlop was selected out of the six local architects invited to participate and launched a challenging 18-month community-focused design development period. He wanted to explain to students who were blind and deaf the design of the school and made models of cardboard for them to feel. The design charrettes with teachers, parents, therapists and doctors were a key way for Dunlop to learn about the struggles disabled youth face on a daily basis. “When the clinicians took me through the range of problems that each child can have it was overwhelming,” Dunlop says. “In many ways I had to put aside everything I had learned as an architect and in architecture school.”

These discoveries informed every aspect of the school’s design. The team developed a strategy that focused on using highly tactile materials to promote sensory navigation so that different spaces are defined by gravel, grass, woodchips and floor markings. The ceiling heights in classrooms differ to create distinct acoustical environments. A slate wall strategically positioned to absorb warmth from the sun delineates classroom levels.

The transitions between spaces facilitate “trailing,” which is when a visually impaired person runs their hand along a wall or handrail. The locker wall in the main corridor is faced with cork that helps these students find their way around. In the old building there were thick red handrails on the walls that gave the school “an institutional feel,” Dunlop says. “Depending on the angle of the wall related to the entrance of the classrooms they know exactly where they are.”

The thoughtful design of the main trailing wall also facilitates sensitizing students to closer contact. “There is one young man who had great difficulty moving independently around his previous school,” McGeever recalls. “When he came to Hazelwood, within a matter of weeks he was moving around the school, almost with no support whatsoever.”

top image: The building’s low profile minimizes its impact on the site and surrounding neighborhood. It weaves through trees that were on the site before it was built. Photo Credit: Andrew Lee

bottom image: An aerial perspective of the school shows its curved shape. Image: Alan Dunlop Architects