A school for: Mark and Spencer, John, Lewis, Debbie, Fraser, TJ and Hugh

 A mixture of newbuild and retrofit measures forms the response to a building still ‘loved by locals’. PD Stoneham’s now disused TJ Hughes department store within the Eastbourne seafront conservation area, Sussex, comprises a mixture of building periods and additions. We proffer the spaces for their intrinsic qualities – some are fixed, others versatile – adaptive learning environments for a town centre location.

 Historically, the department store formed a bastion of civic life, woven into the social and commercial fabric of a town. This is a Tardis poised for re-generation. We adapt the history of place for the needs of present-day students.

 An accumulated building, originally purpose-built for the Dale and Kerley drapery business in 1926, it was partially destroyed during the blitz in 1940, and repaired in 1953 with rusticated pillars and bullseye dormer windows. A façade layering moulded cartouches amidst 1960s plate glass and spandrel panels, the building was originally considered Eastbourne’s rival to the Woolworth building in NYC by Pevsner.

 It has seen tenants come and go – Barkers’ in the 1950s, House of Fraser and Army & Navy in the 1970s, with the 1990’s tenant TJ Hughes closing its doors pre-pandemic in 2019. In 2022 it housed a community space. Since without use, threatened with demolition and a ‘bland vandalism of replacement’ battled by the 20th Century Society. We envisage these new ‘Departments for Education’, set across five floors and comprising:

 6215sqm of education space, 675sqm of roof top play space, a 525sqm mixed hall, 100sqm of garden breakout and a series of classrooms.

 The 40m deep plan dictates centralised circulation, allowing programme to each facade. Floorplate-adjacent central staircases are widened for natural light to compliment a theme of oculi throughout upper levels. The building retains edification of its three ages.

 At ground floor the original entrance ‘shop’ windows are retained, providing visual connectivity to the street with the main refectory leading to a garden. A combined drama and music room forms a visible and audible public relationship. Admin, reception and welfare spaces are programmed by a secondary entrance with lift and stairs to upper floor classrooms and teaching spaces.

 Former robust back of house areas and loading bays are repurposed as workshops and wet areas with cores to upper studios.

 The existing structural layout informs OSB partitioned spaces including laboratory/science and public/private recording studios.

 A new extension replaces 1960s additions with a rooftop play space and ‘Victorian’ mixed hall.

 A design and future technologies department becomes housed within the rear 1960s addition, its floorplate adjusted to provide space for a stair and galleria.

 A library is retrofitted to the former café, beneath a replenished domed oculus, filtering light through bullseye windows with high street views.

 A new cohort, an idiom of modern pedagogy. The Department 4 Education positively integrates its past, with current academia. A scholastic achievement for modern-day secondary schooling with both a public and private collegiate.