London-based architecture practice Architecture Initiative has completed a project to turn the largely windowless, utilitarian, industrial building into an education hub filled with natural light and expansive views; designed to motivate and inspire. The 1970s building stood derelict for eleven years and had become a local eyesore, attracting antisocial behavior. Architecture Initiative identified the opportunity to ambitiously reimagine the vast brutalist structure as a school while celebrating the best of its exposed concrete structure and features such as its massive open spaces and waffle slab ceilings. Northampton International Academy accommodates 420 primary pupils 1500 secondary pupils and a 300-place sixth form. The main mass of the building structure remains largely unchanged.

A screen of perforated, polished metal wraps around the building’s brick exterior, refreshing the façade, which is finished with two illuminated signage boxes that indicate the entrances to the primary and secondary schools giving each age group a dedicated entrance, directly off the new public plaza, which can be separated from the building’s alternative functions. Arranged around the building’s perimeter, enabled by steel-framed mezzanine levels inserted in the 6-m-high spaces, the teaching rooms are allowed maximum access to natural light through new window openings which have been punctured through the existing external walls. Extensive circulation corridors, enabled by the sheer size and depth of the building, are used as break-out learning spaces and social areas.