September 2019

After the summer break, Martine was asked up to Sheffield for Race Cottam Architects to shoot their new Astrea Academy, an 11-18 school on the East side of the city centre. Newly operational, it had only one year group present in the summer 19 term, so Martine suggested waiting until the new academic year in order to get a great spread of pupils and more of the facility operational. There’s always an issue with safeguarding on <18’s and selecting pupils who could appear in photographs was part of the challenge of capturing this campus in use in a bonafide way. Happily Astrea themselves understood the desire to reflect an active school and this meant that a good size cohort was able to be photographed at work and play.

The building itself is on a steeply sloping site with multiple level changes. This affords it commanding views right across the city and Ares Landscape Architects were keen to show the soft and hard landscape responses to this exposed site.