Harris Academy Sutton School, South London Passivhaus Building Redevelopment, UK Education Photos
Harris Academy Sutton, London School
28 Sep 2022
Design: Architype
Location: 2 Chiltern Rd, Sutton SM2 5RD, England, UK
Harris Academy Sutton, London School Building

Photos by Jack Hobhouse
Jury Report
Harris Academy Sutton, London Building
Harris Academy Sutton is a prototype for 21st Century schools, being the UK?s first Passivhaus certified secondary school, and the largest Passivhaus school in the country. Powered only by a single domestic-scale boiler, the school sets an impressive sustainability benchmark, easily achieving RIBA 2030 targets for operational carbon emissions and being enabled for net-zero carbon.
Situated at the gateway to a world-leading medical cancer research and treatment site, Sutton Council required a new secondary school that would meet their aspirational goals for both sustainability and high quality education. The programme for the scale and quality of building required to achieve Passivhaus certification was challenging and required rigorous attention to detail and air-tightness. What has been achieved is a flexible community asset fit for the future.
The building sits on a compact, sloped site, encircled by mature, protected trees. The form of the school deftly mediates this complex terrain and connects the space between the suburban neighbourhood to the north and impending research complex to be constructed to the south.

Externally, copper an...