French International School, Phase 1
Commercial & Workplace
A Thirty-Year-Old Campus, Rebuilt in Eight Weeks
Eight Weeks, Then the Children Come Back
The French International School required its Jardine’s Lookout campus brought up to a new learning standard of design. The campus was thirty years old, and the brief covered almost all of it: classrooms, corridors, bathrooms, offices, the canteen, the swimming pool, the windows and the exterior facade.
A school cannot be refurbished while it is in use, so the entire programme had to run inside the holidays. Eight weeks is a construction programme with no slack in it, and there is no possibility of an extension when children return on a fixed date. The scope also spans building types that would ordinarily be separate contracts: a classroom, a canteen for 150, a dance studio, a swimming pool and a facade have little in common beyond the deadline they share.
One Contractor, Because There Is No Time to Coordinate
Greater Group acted as management contractor and lead consultant, working with PMDL Architecture and Design and the appointed build partners. On a programme this compressed the coordinating role is the design decision: sequencing, procurement and trade overlap have to be resolved before anyone is on site rather than negotiated while the work proceeds.
The delivered scope reflects that. Nine classrooms, two bathrooms, corridors, the administrative and management offices, the staffroom, the library, a 150-seat canteen, a dance studio, the swimming pool and the playgrounds were renovated, alongside a full exterior renovation with new facade cladding and new windows throughout, and a complete replacement of the air conditioning and electrical systems with a full technology upgrade. Services and finishes were being replaced in the same rooms in the same weeks.
Handed Back Before Term
Phase 1 completed on time inside the eight-week window, and the campus opened to students on the date it had to.
The result reads as a school built to a current standard rather than an old one patched. Classroom interiors carry pops of colour through the furniture and fixtures; the bathrooms are minimal, in a light timber palette with large mirrors that lend a small room scale; and the new windows bring in daylight and the greenery the campus sits against. That the communal and extracurricular spaces were lifted alongside the teaching ones is what makes it a campus upgrade rather than a classroom refit, and it set the standard the second phase was measured against.
