An aerial image of a Scottish school designed and built to look like a tractor from above has brought an architectural gem - a B-listed building, no less - to the attention of a new audience. And I, for one, am tickled pink.
Inverkeithing High in Fife was built in the 1970s but a recent tweet that included an aerial image of the school has triggered an awareness of its existence beyond the boundaries of its own council area, where its quirky design is a well-known part of the landscape.
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The main building makes up the body of the tractor but the school also has three detached buildings: two circular ones, which form the tractor’s wheels, and the PE block, which forms the puff of smoke coming out the tractor’s exhaust pipe.
Freedom with school architecture in the 1970s
In one wheel, home economics, business education and the dining hall are housed and in the other a library, lecture hall and science (biology and chemistry, but not physics).
It is hard to imagine that a school would be designed in this way today - something that was acknowledged by the man who designed it, architect Gavin McConnell, who died in 2014.
On a video recorded to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Fife’s Balwearie High, which he designed in 1962 (and which I’ve been told is meant to look like a ship, but frankly I don’t see this one as clearly), Mr McConnell says that, as a young architect, he had “a very considerable degree of freedom of expression which you would not get nowadays”.
De-tractors (I know, groan) might think “just as well” but these days, when it comes to school design, an atrium is often about as wild as it gets, so I would argue we could learn a thing or two from Mr McConnell.
At the opening of Balwearie, Mr McConnell gave a talk on architecture and imagination to the students, in which he tried to encourage them to “see buildings in a slightly different light from just walls and windows”.
However, the layout of Inverkeithing can be a headache, says Robert Macmillan, who has taught there since 2017 and describes his classroom’s position in terms of the school’s tractor shape as “the arse-end of the driver’s cab”, adding, “I think that makes me the bit that hooks on the trailer.”
The corridors in the main building are narrow and “looooooooooong”, says Mr Macmillan, and there is a one-way system in place which means pupils sent back for going the wrong way will inevitably end up “in the huff”. Because of this - and also because of the detached buildings - journey time to and from classrooms is “more likely to be a complaint”, he says.
The building also impacts on staff esprit de corps, he believes, because departments are very spread out.
“The wheel of the tractor at my end of the building comprises home economics, business education and a dining hall,” he explains. “So, I’ll see staff from these departments in passing much more often than the folks in biology or chemistry - as they are so far away.”
Today the condition of Inverkeithing High is rated “poor”, which means it is showing “major defects and/or not operating adequately”.
Plans are, therefore, afoot for a new school, with revamping the current building off the table due to cost - there is believed to be “significant asbestos content within buildings and grounds”.
When asked if the school could, therefore, be knocked down, Shelagh McLean, head of education with Fife Council, said that was yet to be determined and the council was looking at “any requirements there might be for continued use of the existing facilities”, which include a swimming pool.
In council papers, the local authority acknowledges: “If the project was to require demolition of the existing buildings, consent would need to be gained through Historic and Environment Scotland given Inverkeithing’s listed building status.”
On its website, Historic and Environment Scotland describes Mr McConnell’s design as “bold” and says it “demonstrates a clear shift from the more rational, functional school designs of the 1950s and early 1960s, aspiring to the sculptural and signature designs emerging in contemporary architecture”.
But, rather unbelievably perhaps, the description fails to specifically mention that it is shaped like a tractor. So if you did not know Scotland has a school shaped - when viewed from above - like a tractor, now you do. Hopefully, like me, you feel the richer for it.
