Our Lady's R.C. High School, Cumbernauld (Gillespie, Kidd and Coia)

Job files, images and drawings related to project.

Our Lady's High School served the new town of Cumbernauld. It opened in 1968 as a 6-year comprehensive school with an added extension in 1974. The school formed a single block of accommodation and was designed to comply with a necessary provision for playing fields, play areas and car parking on a restricted sloping site on the edge of Cumbernauld. The architects' concern for the development of the classroom section is given a new interpretation by a slight cantilevering of the upper classroom floor over the lower floor and by the extensive use of carefully placed roof lights at the upper roof leve. The classroom block is accessed from internal corridors, which are broken up by staircases & storage accommodation, and reduced on the upper levels to a basic minimum.

A continuous glass screen at ground floor level forms the external skin to the ancillary accommodation such as dining halls, assembly hall and gymnasia, and is punctuated where necessary by solid load bearing walls with small windows to accommodate cloak room and toilet blocks.

The original idea of the building was somewhat compromised by the addition in 1974 which is at right angles to the main block.

The material has been arranged using original Gillespie Kidd and Coia project reference codes.

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Catalogued by Tracy Wilkinson, GKC Project Archivist

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