Sir William Ramsay School, Buckinghamshire

In 2005 Buckinghamshire County Council decided to build the school a much needed new hall for assemblies and other activities. The new 1280m² assembly hall/ performing arts facility, in part single-storey and in part two-storey, incorporates an assembly hall, a dance/performance space, music suite, and six general teaching classrooms.  The new building is free-standing and not physically linked to other school buildings.

The architect specified over 2000m2 of Corus D158 and D200 perforated structural decking for all the roof elements. With sound absorption a key issue, the design team opted to span the wide volume of the hall and performance space with Corus structural roof decking, specified in two different widths of profile, D158 and D200mm. With fabrication depths of 158mm and 200mm respectively, the decking system was able to enclose the spaces while also providing the structural strength to carry the loads of the lighting systems specified by the architect.