Oaks Park High School, Essex

Creating a covered sports area for Oaks Park High

Oaks Park High School is a large secondary school located in Ilford, Essex. With a focus on creating a high-performing inclusive learning environment, the school’s child-centered philosophy places students at the heart of everything they do while striving to ensure every pupil achieves their potential. The school places a huge emphasis on sport and extra-curricular activities with participation actively encouraged and celebrated.

With over 1900 students and limited outdoor covered space, the school first approached Streetspace to help expand the covered breakout areas available to students during inclement weather while also providing cover for the one-way systems in operation within the school while pandemic requirements were in place. As a result five TRITON Maxx symmetric polycarbonate canopies were installed across the school providing a combined total of 408m2 of outdoor covered space for students to use during lunch and break times.

Following successful installation of the five TRITON Maxx canopies, the school wanted to develop a large covered sporting area capable of hosting a range of sports including basketball and netball games. Additionally, the new covered space would need to incorporate a lighting solution so it could be used by the local community outside of school hours.

Streetspace worked closely with Oaks Park High School to achieve this, resulting in the design, manufacture and installation of a 31m x 17m ORION Barrel Vault asymmetric tensile membrane canopy creating 527m2 of covered space. The tensile membrane canopy provides excellent protection from inclement weather and shade from the sun during the hotter months with the tensile fabric offering 100% UV protection. The asymmetric roof design was selected specifically to complement the adjacent sports hall with its pre-existing asymmetric roofline.  

ORION Barrel Vault Canopies are an ideal choice for covering sporting areas offering a high degree of design flexibility while providing a distinctive and elegant aesthetic. The soft tensile membrane fabric helps to create an ambient environment while also absorbing the sounds of rain, voices and echo. During daylight hours the fabric membrane translucency helps to ensure a bright naturally lit area without the need for artificial lighting. The barrel vault design offers a tall centreline free from lattice beam obstructions, providing a great sense of space and more than enough height for basketball and netball games to be played unhindered. The one piece PVC fabric membrane ensures no joins to attract dirt and is finished with a PVDF surface coating to stop dirt becoming ingrained and helping to reduce maintenance.

To extend the use of the canopy outside of daylight hours an LED lighting system, IP rated for external use, was modelled and installed meaning the school could offer the court for use by the local community in the evenings. The package of works also included installation of integrated guttering and downpipes connected to surface water drainage to keep the playing surface as dry as possible. Resurfacing of the sports area allowed for the installation of unique dual hooped rotating basketball and netball towers, making for an easy switch between games while ensuring the correct height and type of hoops are used. 

Read more on our ORION Barrel Vault canopies.

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