Thames Christian School and Battersea Chapel / Henley Halebrown

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Text description provided by the architects. The Thames Christian School and Battersea Chapel project in South London underscores Henley Halebrown’s continued interest in exploring buildings that create both small spaces for people to interact and a concentric focal space to which we can gravitate intuitively and, by implication, recede. This type of space can be a courtyard or a central hall as at Thames Christian School where it has also helped to eliminate the need for corridors. Sited next to Clapham Junction railway station the project brings together the Battersea Chapel Baptist Church and Thames Christian School, an independent coeducational secondary school, under one roof. The new 6-story 5,000m2 building provides the church with a new community hall and sanctuary, and allows the school to expand to 400 pupils, of which nearly half are on the special educational needs register, whilst enabling the regeneration of the inner city Winstanley & York Road Estate. The chapel and school share a rectilinear, two-story plinth that gives the project the gravitas of a public building. Within, the chapel’s congregation gathers in the hall and sanctuary which can be combined into a larger space for baptisms and other big events. Meanwhile, the school hall facilitates performance, dining, physical education, and assembly, and is shared with the community for events outside of school hours. For Henley Halebrown this is about making spaces that configure the way people gather; spaces that can democratize and create hierarchies and spaces that can atomize or unite us.