Priors Court

Prior’s Court is a registered charity providing education and residential care for autistic young people with complex needs aged 5-25, helping them to build brighter, more independent futures.  

Although the facility has been operating for many years, they recently added Piper Arts Centre, a purpose-built facility supporting autistic young people with complex needs to explore music, movement and drama in an environment tailored to them. Buckland was asked to help provide an external canopy made from UK larch to create a new outside space.  

The design was comprised of series of UK larch glulam posts and beams connected to a central point like a sunburst over which Tensile fabric was stretched to provide shelter.  

While the design was relatively simple, we had to be really careful with the design of the beam bracket fixings to the existing masonry wall. Because of the gaps in the bricks, we had to be precise with how the resin anchors hit the points between the bricks – if we didn’t get this right, the beams would not have met the wall in the right place, and their sizes would have had to be adjusted, so there was very little room for error.