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Berkhamsted School, Sixth Form Centre
Brick types: New Chailey Stock
Factory: Chailey
Project location: Berkhamsted
Project type: Education
Architect: Design Engine Architects
Contractor: Beard Construction
Set in the heart of Berkhamsted School’s historic campus, the new Sixth Form Centre is a landmark development that brings together architectural sensitivity, modern functionality, and material excellence. Designed by Design Engine Architects, the project delivers a purpose-built facility that supports academic ambition while creating a distinctive architectural statement worthy of its prominent setting.
Completed as part of a broader masterplan, the Sixth Form Centre provides high-quality learning environments, study zones, and social spaces across a thoughtfully arranged layout. Its scale and siting respond directly to the surrounding context, mediating between traditional red-brick buildings and the more contemporary structures nearby. Achieving this harmony required a considered approach to materials — one that could echo heritage while expressing the institution’s progressive values.
Central to this approach is the specification of Ibstock’s New Chailey Stock brick. With its warm, variegated tones and soft texture, the brick was chosen to reflect the established architectural language of Berkhamsted’s campus. Its character-rich appearance ensures the building integrates comfortably within its environment, while subtle shifts in colour and bond add richness and depth to the facades.
The visual impact is elevated further by the use of Ibstock Nexus Underslung Brick Soffits, which deliver sharp-edged brickwork detailing in overhead and recessed areas — most notably in the canopies and entrance zones. These soffits enable crisp, continuous brick expression across horizontal and vertical planes, giving the building a sense of craft and permanence, while demonstrating technical confidence.
These details bring architectural refinement to key thresholds and gathering spaces, making brick not only the external envelope but a feature of experiential and spatial quality. The clean lines and seamless integration of the Nexus system allowed Design Engine to realise their bold, modern detailing without compromising the overall material integrity.
As a project aimed at inspiring the next generation, the Sixth Form Centre does more than simply meet functional needs — it embodies values of excellence, discipline, and aspiration. The material palette, led by Ibstock products, is central to this expression: robust yet refined, contemporary yet rooted in tradition.
Internally, the building offers flexible spaces suited to modern pedagogy, with generous glazing and well-planned circulation enhancing light and movement. Externally, landscaping and carefully articulated brickwork give the building civic presence while reinforcing its role as a central hub for Sixth Form life.
Through the use of New Chailey Stock and Nexus Underslung Soffits, the Berkhamsted Sixth Form Centre represents best practice in educational design — a building that elevates its setting, respects its heritage, and showcases the enduring potential of brick in modern architecture.
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