The school commissioned H2o to provide a professional-level performing arts auditorium, music school, and gallery spaces within the school’s stately gardens. The new building is contemporary and striking, yet formal in its planning and provides a deliberately simple counterpoint to the neo-gothic existing building opposite.
 
Careful planning established an axial relationship between the new building and the existing learning buildings, maintaining existing mature trees. To the north, a light-filled courtyard becomes part of the music school, with flexible indoor spaces opening up to the outdoors in summer and taking advantage of the low sun in winter. The thermally massive brick walls enhance the internal environment year round.