The Plastic Classroom at Kennington Primary School, Lancashire, nicknamed “the bubble”, is one of the more unusual listed buildingsStructure of particular architectural and/or historic interest deserving of special protection. in England. Built in 1973–1974, it was the first fully structural plastic building in Britain. It was designed by the architects Ben Stephenson and Mike Bracewell, as a prototype for a system of pre-fabricated schools to be mass produced by the Lancashire County Council Architects’ Department.[1]
The ultimate aim was to build an entire school from the plastic system at a site in Thornton-Cleveleys,[2] but the oil crisis of late 1973 made the mass production of plastic buildings uneconomical, as the price of plastics rocketed. The Kennington classroom nevertheless remains in use today.[1]
Kennington Primary School was built in 1908, with two classrooms flanking a central hall, but it has been extended over the years. Its Plastic Classroom was designated a Grade II listed building in 2017.[1]
Architecture
The sixteen-foot (5 m) tall classroom is based on a modified icosahedron,[2][a]An icosahedron is a 20-faced polyhedron,[3] a three-dimensional solid consisting of a collection of polygons.[4] formed of components of equal size, which lends itself to prefabrication.[1] Constructed of 35 reinforced white triangular plastic panels, the classroom is linked to the main school building by a corridor.[5]
The absence of vertical walls and corners required a new range of plastic furniture and room dividers to be developed, but the classroom’s design was in tune with contemporary pedagogical thinking, which advocated “teaching in the round”, with freedom of movement for pupils and fluid arrangements of space.[1]