Wallingford School to create futuristic vision of Howbery Business Park

Oxfordshire’s Howbery Business Park has called on the services of Wallingford School’s art and design students to create a futuristic vision of its existing development opportunity, which will see students create external and internal designs of next generation office accommodation.

Drawings will be exhibited in the foyer of the park’s historic Manor House later this year with the winning designed mocked-up and displayed as Howbery’s vision of the future on an external Perspex sign created to simulate a view across the development land.

Howbery Business Park has planning permission to create 140,000 sq. ft. of new office space.

Angela Andrews, Lettings and Marketing Manager, Howbery Business Park, explains: “We’re delighted that Wallingford School is embracing the challenge of creating a vision of Howbery’s development potential. We look forward to viewing their artistic interpretations, which will be pitched to us by students at the beginning of the new school year. All of the designs will have an environmental theme in support of the park’s sustainability strategy.”

Wallingford School has selected students from its BTEC Level 3 Diploma in Art & Design to work on this project in support of the course curriculum.

Robert Pickford, Curriculum Coordinator for Art, Wallingford School, comments: “This project very much underpins the ethos of Wallingford School to ensure students engage with businesses in a vocational context. We’d like to thank Howbery Business Park for this opportunity and look forward to seeing our students create and pitch ideas later this year.”

Howbery Business Park has strong links to Wallingford School with a number of collaborations underway. This includes the painting of a mural at the request of park tenant Anglo Info, student work experience with a number of park tenants and Howbery’s donation of unused office furniture for the school’s IT room.

Angela Andrews concludes: “We’ve created a strong business community at Howbery Business Park but it is also important to us that we continue to engage with our local community. Working with Wallingford School is an excellent way to do that and we may even see one of the students as a tenant here in a few years time!”

Howbery Business Park offers both short-term lets and larger, long-term options in bespoke office builds. Major occupiers include the Environment Agency and HR Wallingford, which contribute to a total of 40 businesses on site with scope to expand further.