Eliot Bank Primary School
A treehouse-inspired environment rooted in biophilic warmth, natural tones, layered greenery and graphics that weave together literary and musical worlds.
- Year
- 2026
- Architects
- Interior Architects
OVERVIEW
A Place to Inspire
A school should be one of the liveliest spaces a child encounters - a place that serves as one of their first steps into the world, somewhere that provides constant inspiration to explore, learn and grow. At Eliot Bank Primary School, a state primary in South East London, the library and music rooms were well-used and well-loved, but the potential of what those spaces could mean to the school community hadn't been realised.
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the brief
Giving Back
Working pro bono alongside our friends at Interior Architects and Umbrella Furniture, our team transformed two adjoining communal spaces - a library and a music room - into environments that could genuinely shift how children learn, create, and belong.
Both spaces needed to flex across different uses: quiet individual spaces, group learning sessions, interactive music classes, and more. The design had to hold it all, without compromising any of it, feeling tightly connected to the school community it was made for.
Calm over chaos, nature over noise, spaces that felt grown-up, but warm. Those instincts became the brief.
OUR APpROACH
Authentic Expression
The first move was direct engagement. Before anything was drawn or specified, our team ran co-creation workshops directly with a set of Eliot Bank pupils at our London studio: creative exercises, painting, illustration, printing, fabric dyeing - all to allow space for the students to express themselves within their new space, creating the imagery that would dress the walls, windows and floors of the space.
Calm over chaos, nature over noise, spaces that felt grown-up, but warm. Those instincts became the brief. The concept that emerged - treetop-inspired, biophilic, grounded in the school's surrounding landscape - came directly from the school community.
The palette, forms, and graphic language all reinforce that this is a place made for, and by, the children.
OUR APPROACH
Bringing the Outside, In
Our design strategy wove together literary iconography, musical references, and the natural world into a unified visual language across both spaces. A corridor mural system, hand painted by our team, turns the corridor into a memorable entrance experience that immediately brings the outside in. Pupil’s framed paintings and prints, painted wall tiles, and playful illustrations - created in the initial workshops - covered the walls in both rooms.
Biophilic window manifestations and matching custom rugs inspired by the children’s designs dissolve the boundary between inside and outside, drawing the landscape in. Throughout, the palette, the forms, and the graphic language all reinforce that this is a place made for, and by, the children who learn there.
Credits
Photography
Graham Turner, Oscar Ralf
Videography
Graham Turner
