Need to Economise The County Architect, W.T. Curtis achieved a very satisfactory solution involving steel framed buildings, in brick, with reduced ceiling heights and flat roofs. Approval of the Board of Education was obtained for a reduction of one foot in the height of teaching rooms. To maintain standards of ventilation and lighting, wider windows were needed, tending to make the whole of the outer walls of classrooms glazed areas with narrow supporting pillars in reinforced concrete. The new type of design consisted of a reinforced concrete skeleton with floors, roofs and staircases also of concrete, filled in externally with a minimum amount of brick cavity walling. The inevitable result was that his schools assumed a predominantly horizontal appearance, offset to some extent by the central towers which were invariably a feature of his designs (not purely decorative for they always housed water storage tanks!) Greenford's tower is one of the highest of the 30 or so schools that Curtis designed. The demand for economy was most clearly reflected in the assembly halls of his schools which were designed to fulfil several functions. At the stage end, the procenium arch was fitted with folding doors so that the stage could be used as a classroom (a wasted resource at GHS). At the other end was a kitchen enabling the hall to double up as a dining area. The new school was well thought of at the time of construction as shown by this review by J.R. Leathard, FRIBA which appeared in the journal Building in May 1939: No current architectural commentary is complete without a Middlesex County Council School a large number of new ones being opened per month, I have been informed. In the process of transforming the whole of the county of Middlesex into a vast suburban appendage of London, the jerry builder has created a pretty problem for the county educational authority; a problem which it has solved in a manner which redounds to the credit of all concerned. There must be more school towers in the County of Middlesex today than in any other county in England. THE SECONDARY SCHOOL AT GREENFORD conforms to the established and now familiar character of the modern Middlesex school. There is some small departure from precedent in this instance, however which is noteworthy. Some experiment with curved planshapes has been carried out, the results of which can he observed in the bastion-like treatment of the entrance porch, in the tall flanking buttresses, in the rounded terminals to the projecting window features on the end projections and in the semicircular tower window. These surface undulations modify the monotony of straight-line insistance and are an innovation which appears to possess a fairly promising future after further study. As an example of axis architecture, this balanced composition possesses many points of interest; it is notable for its inventiveness and the verve with which the original conception has been brought to its conclusion in terms of bricks and mortar. Another critic who admired the Curtis buildings was Nikolaus Pevsner, compiler of the exhaustive Buildings of England series. Writing in the Middlesex edition published in 1951 he wrote: 'The County Council is responsible for a number of soundly planned schools, chiefly in the west part of the county. These were designed between the wars by W.T.Curtis & Burchett and after the war by C.G.Stillman.' He described Evelyns Secondary Modern School (1936) as 'a typical example of the progressive Middlesex C.C. schools of the thirties: and he used this same phrase to describe several other Curtis buildings. It is interesting to place Middlesex County building within the context of 1930s architecture in general. The Hoover building in Perivale (Wallace, Gilbert and Partners, 1930) is often cited as a good example and the term Art Deco is associated with it. Its rounded projecting windows are not dissimilar to those of B02 (careers) and B20 (Special Needs). Another type of building generally thought highly of were the London underground stations built by Charles Holden. Amos Grove is the most often referred to example but closer to home, Acton Town, Chiswick Park, Sudbury Hill and Sudbury Town are good examples. Park Royal Underground Station (Day, Welch & Lander. 1936) has a tower quite similar to Greenford's! The School Expands The 1939 building served the needs of the Grammar School admirably until 1970 when three huts (PI7-19) were erected to cater for expansion in numbers due to increasing Sixth Form students. The first major addition to the site came when Government funds were made available to cope with the raising of the school leaving age to 16 in 1969-70. As a result two new laboratories (E14-16) and two Domestic Science rooms (TO3-4) were completed in 1974 (still sometimes referred to as the ROSLA block), but by this time their original raison d'etre was perhaps overshadowed by the overwhelming need for new accommodation to cope with Ealing's change to comprehensive education in 1974. The use of the ground floor of the ROSLA block by Modular Studies since 1984 is happily in keeping with the funding's original intention. The Arts/Technical Block was completed in September 1975 and provides splendid facilities for all aspects of the Creative Arts. Its design is open plan, with inevitable drawbacks. There not being any corridors, movement between certain areas disturbs others, the Art Department in particular suffering in this way by being on a main thoroughfare. The English and Humanities (originally History) block was completed in September 1977. Interesting aspects of this design are the movable partitions between the central classrooms and the social areas at either end. These features conform very much with the philosophy of the Newsom Report (Half our Future - 1963) which advocated flexibility of classroom design to allow for teaching groups of varying sizes and also stressed the importance of communal activities, hence the social areas which have tended to be wasted space in the past but are now being used more imaginatively by the departments involved. It is fair to say that the partitions remain closed most of the time and do not provide effective sound-proofing between the rooms. So much for educational theory! The final major addition to the school was of course the Sports Hall completed in February 1981. Reference to its excellent facilities shared by school and community is made elsewhere. We must not forget the huts or relocatable units as the Technical Services Department describe these temporary structures. Surely false economy considering what must be the high cost of maintaining them and replacing them after frequent fires. Not ideal classrooms either, being too cold in winter and too hot in summer. The Sixth Form Suite is larger and perhaps an exception to this generalisation providing on the whole a pleasant working environment. The original 1975 prefabricated building was burned down on 9th November 1983 but was fortunately replaced in September 1984 by a larger unit incorporating a hitherto separate hut. page12