Music accommodation in secondary schools: the music department

In this exclusive extract from Music accommodation in secondary schools: a design guide by the Department of Education, we describe the components that make up the music department, and the guiding principles for locating a department and laying out the spaces.

The music spaces in a school are usually collectively referred to as a 'department'. They consist of a range of rooms of different sizes, with fairly stringent acoustic requirements. Each school will individually decide how best to create a range of spaces that will serve its current and future needs from the overall space available.

Case studies show a wide range of approaches to allocating the available area, reflecting different approaches and priorities. Whether the music department is being created from existing space within a school, or is a new construction, there will be many different ways to achieve a satisfactory outcome, but if the briefing and design process is careful and detailed, an excellent result should follow.

Overall area allocation

Building Bulletin 98 provides guidance on the overall area of a secondary school, as well as space allocation for various activities, including music.

Music departments commonly include a combination of the following spaces:

• Music classrooms: large learning and teaching spaces
• Group rooms: smaller breakout spaces, associated with the music classrooms; also used for instrument teaching and practice
• Recording/control room
• Instrument and other stores
• Staff base.

Some music departments also have a performance space. Most use the music classrooms for this purpose, or a general space in the school such as the main hall or drama space. Some music departments also have some form of social 'hub' (possibly shared with other departments) to encourage and support extra-curricular music activities.

Music spaces and sound

Music spaces are for creating and listening to sound, for which an appropriate acoustic environment is essential.

Sound can sometimes travel through the building fabric or structure, even if it has a high acoustic specification. For example, doors, windows and vents are particularly difficult to insulate. In planning music spaces, it is essential to remember that:

• The aim is to enable people to hear music clearly, without distraction, and with suitable enhancement by the room acoustics
• The two main acoustic concerns are sound quality and sound insulation
• The main influences on the quality of musical sounds are room volume, room geometry and surface finishes
• Successful sound separation between spaces depends on good planning, structure and construction detail, and on good workmanship on-site
• The location of the music department, relative to the rest of the school (or neighbours), should be carefully considered.

Location

Most music departments host a range of activities and events for the wider community. These include community choir groups, clubs (such as rock music clubs or drum clubs), and performances by school and external musicians outside the school day. During school hours many secondary schools will also be making their facilities available to other schools (if they are, for example, part of a Diploma consortium), or to associated primary schools if they are acting as a 'hub'. All these activities will involve groups of people arriving and leaving the department throughout the day, and therefore the location of the music department should make this as easy as possible, while maintaining security for the school community. When considering where to locate the music spaces, important points include:

• Acoustics issues, particularly avoiding disturbance to or from neighbouring spaces, including external spaces such as playgrounds or sports pitches
• Ensuring that the music spaces are close to other facilities that will be used for musical activities, such as the main hall or drama department
• Creating easy access for the movement of musical instruments and equipment required for performance in spaces outside the department
• Locating the music department on or close to the main entrance route to the school
• Organising the entrance so that it can easily be supervised from the main school reception, or has a separate dedicated reception (for use outside school hours), without compromising the security of the rest of the school
• Allocating sufficient parking area for the group sizes that are anticipated, either as part of the main school parking provision, or with a dedicated area
• Encouraging sustainable travel habits by locating facilities near public or shared transport provision where possible.

Adjacencies

When deciding how to arrange the layout of a music department, there are some critical relationships, or adjacencies, between spaces – for example the location of group rooms where percussion is practised. Percussion sounds are likely to cause the greatest potential disturbance to neighbours, because of the repetitive patterns and low frequencies of the sound. Drum practice group rooms, in particular, should be located where they are buffered from immediate neighbours, to the side and, in multi-storey buildings, above and below. Buffering can be achieved by relatively underused spaces, such as storerooms, corridors or resource rooms.

Main classrooms and group rooms should be located as near to each other as possible to facilitate supervision. Some schools prefer to have group rooms directly accessed from classrooms for breakout activities. However, as peripatetic staff (those who visit more than one school) will need to access group rooms without disturbing classrooms, some of the group rooms should be separately accessed.

Recording/control rooms and studios are best placed adjacent to a large group room, and to a classroom or performance space.

Windows in music spaces, if left open, are likely to cause a noise nuisance to neighbours, so unless the department is located in a remote place (not ideal for other reasons, such as security and access), the window and ventilation strategies will need careful consideration in all layout types.

Copyright RIBA Publishing August 2010

Find out more

Music Accommodation in Secondary Schools: A design guide, which replaces Building Bulletin 86, will help all those involved in procuring and delivering secondary school music spaces – including local authorities schools and designers – to deliver well-designed music accommodation, and is available to buy from RIBA Bookshops.

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