Catmose Campus - EllisMiller

Catmose Campus

A £24 million multi-purpose education and community masterplan.

Catmose Campus contains a 900-pupil academy, a children’s centre and nursery, a remote office for Rutland County Council, an adult learning centre, a learning disability resource centre, a theatre, an art gallery, a sports centre and health club, and a new civic space in front of the building.

We worked with our client from the outset to develop the parameters of the brief, before conducting a thorough consultation process with users and other stakeholders. Laid out as four adjacent pavilions, Catmose Campus provides a strong marker presence to Oakham without being overbearing, while parallel and intersecting axes provide views through the plan and across the site, knitting the campus into its semi-rural setting. A strong axial route provides clear navigability. Catmose could easily have been overwhelmingly complicated, but succeeds thanks to the application of simple architectural principles that have delivered a usable and popular scheme where a diverse range of community facilities exists comfortably side by side.