College remodelling: This transformation of a former Victorian school into a modern apartment block preserves a local landmark and adapts the building's historic fabric to a bold new use

Architectural Review, The, April, 2002 by Catherine Slessor

Liverpool has a plentiful stock of robust but now largely redundant Victorian buildings that formed the backbone of the city's prosperity. The conversion of these into shops, bars, restaurants and flats continues to provide opportunities for young practices, such as Shed KM, to develop and expand their repertoires. Founded by Jonathan Falkingham, Shed KM has trod a familiar path from whackily energetic bar and club makeovers in Liverpool's decaying nineteenth-century mercantile quarter, to bigger and more serious projects. (Falkingham is also a partner in development company Urban Splash, which has proved a consistently imaginative patron of new architecture.) The practice's remodelling of the former Collegiate High School is a typical case in point; in both scope and scale it is more ambitious than the usual piecemeal conversions and handled with a confident maturity.

Opened in 1843, the Collegiate High School is a sturdy, provincial Tudor Gothic confection built to the competition-winning design of Harvey Lonsdale Eames. It lies in the suburb of Everton, on the north-eastern edge of the city centre. The main building boasts an impressive 13-bay frontage constructed of local pink sandstone, with an octagonal lecture hall adjoining the rear. By the mid 1980s it had fallen into disuse and subsequently suffered extensive fire damage. Numerous proposals for refurbishment went unrealized, as all proved incapable of reconciling the substantial cost of regeneration with a viable new use.

Shed KM has transformed the school into 95 apartments in an approach that preserves the key elements of the original building and combines these with a lucid, contemporary architectural language. The unsafe rear elevation was removed, along with internal walls and floors, so the new building sits partially enclosed by the massive stone carapace of the remaining principal facade which has been cleaned of accumulated grime and restored.

New apartments are arranged in four double-height storeys. On the preserved main elevation, these relate to the existing geometry of the windows. To the rear, new openings and balconies articulate a smooth white wall plane. New parts have a crisply robust elegance, with metal balconies and sliding timber screens at ground level. Balconies are partially enclosed by slatted timber panels set at right angles to the wall plane, that cast delicately striated shadows over the white facade.

Flats on the first three floors are compactly and logically arranged around double-height living spaces, in the well-rehearsed tradition of the loft apartment. Kitchen and bathrooms are tightly planned around vertical service cores and push out into the spinal circulation corridor giving a potentially institutional space a degree of rhythm and animation. Bedrooms are elevated on mezzanine gallery levels for privacy. Top floor flats are single-storey penthouses, with fully glazed walls opening on to terraces that offer views across Liverpool, the Mersey estuary and the distant Welsh mountains.

Behind the main building, the octagonal theatre has also been remodelled to create a tranquil, communal garden. Only the external walls remain, structurally stabilized by a steel plate that runs around the rim of the brick shell. A new deck has been introduced at first floor level, penetrated by a ramp rising from a bridge that connects back to the main building. Mature Himalayan birch trees and Virginia creeper soften the austerity of the brick walls. Executed with sensitivity to the nuances of history but also with a pragmatic eye on the future, Shed KM's scheme brings life back to a Liverpool landmark that was so nearly lost. C. S.