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The East Manchester Academy is a high school in the heart of Manchester's regeneration areas, which caters for around 970 students aged between 11 and 16.
A member of the Education and Leadership Trust, the academy is a purpose-built, state-of-the-art learning environment, with facilities ranging from custom-built classrooms and specialist work areas, to social areas and a highly versatile multi-use space.
The requirement
Lack of space, particularly dining space, had become a real issue at the school, with students often struggling to find places to sit during their breaks. This meant they frequently wound up queueing or sitting around the school’s corridors, which wasn’t ideal.
The school decided that creating a covered outdoor seating area would provide them with the additional space they required. It would also provide students with a place they could go, regardless of what the weather was doing.
Challenges
When our team assessed the site, they found there were lots of underground electrical wires and drainage pipes right where the sheltered area was going to be created.
Our installation manager carried out a full assessment of the designated space. This was to make sure that none of the wires or pipes would interfere with the foundations for the canopy we’d specified for this particular project.
The solution
We installed one our hugely-popular Connekt canopies because the school wanted the sheltered eating area to be as large as possible. The canopy spanned 16mx6m and covered 96m2.
More specifically, we decided to install one of our back-to-back Connekt systems because we’d previously installed this system at another school in the area, which The East Manchester Academy were really impressed with.
The spec
9 steel supporting posts
18 brackets
18 lengths of aluminium fascia
48 fibreglass roof sheets
5 days to install
4 Canopies UK installers
Results
Space, or lack of it, is no longer an issue for the school. Pupils have a dedicated seating area they can use whenever they like and that protects them from the elements all-year round.
And while we may have installed the largest possible canopy within the space we were working with, there are plans to make the canopy even bigger. The school plans to double the size of the canopy by installing a second system right next to it.
