Beech Court Pavilion at Abingdon School in Oxfordshire has been shortlisted for the School Project of the Year at the Education Property Awards 2025.

Abingdon School is a leading independent day and boarding school set within an impressive parkland campus, featuring historic buildings and landscape. David Morley Architects (DMA) have been working with the school since 2016 to develop and successfully deliver four separate phases of their estate masterplan.

The new pavilion provides a flexible space for approximately 250 diners, with a new kitchen and servery, and a new foyer and hospitality space for the connected Amey Theatre building. Described by the school as “a real hub for school life,” the pavilion’s bright and spacious interior offers a welcoming space to enhance the experience for students, teachers, and visitors using the building.

DMA designed the scheme to sit sensitively within a garden setting, maintaining a clear connection to the outside with green views in all directions. The dynamic shaped roof is conceived to appear as lightweight as possible with its sculpted form complementing the strong geometry of the pitched roofs of the adjacent theatre. The roof’s free-spanning structure maximises flexibility in the use of the space, featuring a beautiful timber latticed, octagonal shaped design which is visually striking and combined with acoustic timber slatting between the joists, creates a rich and warm feeling to the interior.

The vision was to create a building that felt like you were dining in the garden, and so the glazed external walls feature sliding doors to maximise the indoor to external connection as well as additional ventilation during the summer months.  A central roof lantern further increases the daylight, visual connection to nature and facilitates natural stack ventilation.

Being mindful of the dining space as a high traffic area, careful consideration to the acoustics were weaved into the pavilion’s interior architecture, by using absorbent surfaces, including the underside of the roof, the floor underlay and soft chair feet pads to allow conservations to be easily heard and to enhance the experience particularly for neurodivergent pupils.  The building is fully accessible with level entrances and a spacious interior.

Beech Court Pavilion has sustainability at its heart and achieves an EPC A rating using a host of passive measures and low energy technologies. The building has been designed to be highly energy efficient in use, utilising air source heat pumps for renewable energy, natural ventilation and the overhanging roof for solar shading. The scheme has enhanced the biodiversity of the site with a green roof and new landscape planting that supports the building to blend sensitively into its context.

After a year in use, the positive impact of the project has been demonstrated through post-occupancy feedback from the client. Martin McKenna, Director of Estates at Abingdon School, stated:

“Over the past few years, we have worked very closely with DMA on our Beech Court Building and Faringdon Lodge Building and have always found them to be open to client suggestions, working collaboratively to overcome design problems but always with an eye on capital costs and environmental performance. The Pavilion has exceeded our expectations and due to its innovative design, it has meet all of Abingdon School’s desired development outcomes which range from providing a dining room space to support staff and students, support the Amey theatre evening events, providing a welcoming space for open days and School evening functions and achieving our environmental and running cost performance targets.

We have received numerous compliments regarding the Pavilion building for the intricate lattice glulam roof framework and the sedum roof surface with its daily changing moorland heath like colour scheme. 

I especially like the internal acoustics performance as this was a particularly challenging design aspect which DMA were able to overcome with contemporary triangular shaped battened panels which really add to the internal visual impact of the space especially with nighttime events.”

We are thrilled with the news that the project is shortlisted alongside some other fantastic schemes, and we look forward to the results at the award ceremony on 20^th May in Leeds.

David Morley Architects worked closely with a team of design consultants including Qoda, engineersHRW, ASA Landscape Architects, Attune Acoustics, Ridge, Rise 4 Consultants and Beard Construction.