Abraham Guest School

Abraham Guest is the first new high school to be built in Wigan in almost 30 years.

The school boasts new, state of the art facilities including a public lending library, extensive adult learning facilities, performance studio, and sports facility that incorporates a gymnasium, 4-court sports hall and third generation multi-use games area, which has been designed to Sports England standards.

Pupils and staff have helped with the design and have had their say in everything from the landscaping to the food on their new, bistro-style cafeteria menu where pupils will buy lunch with a cashless catering system using their own fingerprint.

Sustainability was also a key design feature.  Grey water will be harvested from a ‘knowledge garden’ which will capture rainfall and feed from the washrooms in the science block.  This water will be naturally filtered through a reed bed and fed back into the system and reused, with the remainder dispersed using a sustainable drainage system.

For the building façade architects NPS Group required a system that would facilitate the construction of the three brightly coloured curved walls to soften and give impact to the modelling of the building.  A Wetherby Insulated Render System was the ideal choice as in addition to providing the vibrant flexible render finish specified the thermal properties of the insulation help retain heat and keep heating bills low and carbon emissions to a minimum.

The steel frame structure was faced with building boards onto which 190mm Wetherby EPS insulation was mechanically fixed.  This was then faced with traditional brickwork with inset panels of Wetherby 1.5mm ‘K’ Silicone Render in vibrant colours to give impact to this state of the art facility.  Finished U-value 0.18W/m²K.