Design Features
Hazelwood School offers a comprehensive range of facilities, all customised to meet the complex needs of its pupils. They include a gymnasium with floor level trampoline and soft play equipment, hydrotherapy pool with mobile hoists, art, music, and cookery rooms, a library, media suite, open plan dining/assembly area, doctor, nurse and physiotherapy rooms, outdoor music and play areas and an outdoor sensory area. The school also features trailing walls, with a texture which changes as it nears a classroom, allowing pupils with visual impairments to navigate their way along the corridors. Included in the grounds is a stand alone, three bedroom house which is used to promote and develop pupils' life skills. In their final year some young people will stay in the house for one or two nights a week to experience living in a different environment from their own homes. The bedrooms are all twin bedded and en-suite.
The school is single storey and environmentally sustainable in both design and in its operation. The external area includes a sensory garden and great care has been taken to protect and include existing trees within the school's boundary. The school design and use of materials are sympathetic to its parkland context. Hazelwood has been recognised for its high standards of design quality and the imaginative use of a variety of natural materials such as wood, slate and cork.
The low profile of the building and the retention of mature trees allow the structure to nestle within its landscaped context without impacting upon its neighbouring conservation area. The school and life skills house are low mass and the use of natural materials creates a quiet response to the surrounding environment. The life skills house provides a cornerstone and creates a setting off point for the curved shape of the building. The shape embraces a south facing external amenity space which includes a tree garden, tactile space and music garden.
The 's' shape form allows the building to curve between existing trees and the scale and mass of the building helps pupils with visual impairments navigate around their environment. The north wall contains the sensory features, while the south side is glazed and faces the busy main road, designed to be more like a building the children would encounter in their everyday life outside the school. The emphasis is on unobtrusive, calming uncluttered spaces whilst at the same time not making things too safe and also encouraging the pupils to learn about their surroundings.
Choice of Site
The site comprises an open space adjacent but unconnected to Bellahouston Park. Over 50 mature trees lined the site, the great majority of which have been retained. The design responds to the specific site characteristics and in particular to the location of existing trees.
The retention of the trees was an important sustainable issue due to the wildlife they support, the carbon dioxide they consume and the visual amenity they provide the local community. The trees form an integral part of the landscape design, reinforcing the school's boundary and providing a focus to the smaller teaching gardens.
Sustainable Urban Drainage techniques have been used to reduce the quantity and improve the quality of run off water. The infiltration basins and soakaways reduce the potential for future urban flooding and improve habitat for wildlife in urban watercourses. To the south west of the site this system has become a landscape feature, exaggerating the rolling nature of the site and adding some visual drama.
Materials
The architects chose timber as a key building material because it is emotive, warm, tactile, and "smells good". The school has all the necessary qualities required to create an internal and external environment for children who depend on touch and smell to find their way around. Zinc was chosen for the roof. This material can be laid at a very shallow pitch, more so than tiles, thus ensuring that the ridge height would not rise beyond the beginnings of the existing tree canopy. This was important to ensure the building nestled into the parkland without impacting on its context or on the local community. 
The timber cladding is larch produced from a sustainable source. Baffle walls, built to reduce traffic noise, are clad in natural slate. Timber is also used extensively throughout the construction of the school to ensure its carbon is as low as possible. The European whitewood glu-lam timber frame, the Finnish redwood all timber windows and the larch weatherboarding have all been sourced from accredited sustainable sources. This sustainable sourcing ensures that the forests from which the timber is taken are managed and the effects of deforestation are countered by appropriate replanting.
Standing Seem Aluminium and PVC single ply sheeting were both considered for the roof, but rejected on the basis of embedded energy and appearance.
Reclaimed Welsh roofing slate is used on the 800 square metres of slate clad walls. The reuse of this material greatly cuts down the embodied energy associated with such a product.
The highly textured nature of the slate cladding, chosen as a natural contrast to the timber weatherboarding is of great assistance to the children as they navigate around the building. Brick was initially considered instead of slate for the solid 'landscape' walls, but slate was eventually chosen to reflect the roofing materials of the surrounding houses.
Energy
Computer analysis was used during the detailed design stage to predict that energy consumption would match, or even better, good practice guidelines despite the high loads associated with heating the hydrotherapy pool.
Lighting: Large areas of high level glazing in the teaching spaces allow natural light to penetrate deep into the classrooms thus reducing the need for artificial lighting. Continuous clerestory glazing and areas of floor to ceiling glazes screens provide natural light to the main circulation space and entrance foyer. To further reduce electrical consumption, intelligent daylight linked light controls have been installed through the school.
Solar Glare and Heat Gain: The classrooms face north thus reducing the amount of solar glare and solar heat gain in these spaces. Timber louvers have been externally fixed to the glazing of the south facing circulation space. In conjunction with the extended south facing roof overhangs the potential for solar heat gain within these spaces is minimized. The minimizing of solar heat gain removes the potential need for mechanical cooling/ventilation.
Ventilation: All classroom and administration areas are naturally ventilated thus reducing the potential electrical consumption.
Heating is achieved by using underfloor heating fed by condensation gas boilers and hot water generated using high efficiency condensing water heaters. The pool was identified as a large consumer of gas and so smaller local boilers were provided to operate independently, avoiding the need to ignite the larger boilers during the summer months.