Liberton Community Campus

New 1200 pupil community campus designed to Passivhaus Classic incorporating various community facilities including a GP practice, public library, gym, and dance studio.

Date

2026

Client

City of Edinburgh Council

Value

£60m

The new Liberton Community Campus (LCC) is our most recent and exciting opportunity to develop our long-standing relationship with the City of Edinburgh Council (CEC). We completed the RIAS award winning James Gillespies High School and the replacement Portobello High School in 2016. These were followed by our involvement in the replacement Castlebrae Community High School project which was completed early 2022. The experience gained through these three large scale community campus projects has allowed us to clearly understand and appreciate the evolving goals and priorities of CEC and transfer these lessons learned to the new Liberton project which is currently at RIBA Stage 4.

The new campus is being developed as part of CEC’s 20-minute neighbourhood strategy which has been developed by the authority to find ways for Edinburgh residents to meet their daily needs within 20 minutes of their homes by walking, using public transport, wheeling, or cycling.

The campus will include a replacement Liberton HS with capacity for 1200 pupils, community facilities such as a public library and a GP practice and workspace for local authority partners. The building is being designed to Passivhaus Classic standards and is aspiring to a cradle to construction embodied carbon target of <600kgCOe/m2.

The new campus is being constructed on the site of the existing Liberton High School. The existing site is effectively landlocked by development on all sides with little clear, defining or immediately apparent urban edge, street network, or geographical feature for the proposed building to address – an issue made more challenging by the irregular site boundary edges and minimal street frontage, minimal street presence and restricted opportunities to create meaningful community connections. 

To address these challenges the new building, has been positioned to create a direct connection to the main entrance into the site. Its proposed form and location allows the building to be viewed clearly from Gilmerton Road (the main site access), to present an accessible and welcoming frontage to building users and the community, and by virtue of its location be seen to be connected to the community.

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Locations

Edinburgh

64 Queen Street
Edinburgh
EH2 4NA

0131 464 6100
edinburgh@jmarchitects.net

Glasgow

50 Bell Street
Glasgow
G1 1LQ

0141 333 3920
glasgow@jmarchitects.net

London

Second Floor
37 Alfred Place
London WC1E 7DP

0207 580 5330
london@jmarchitects.net

Manchester

3A, 54 Princess Street
Manchester
M1 6HS

0161 200 6300
manchester@jmarchitects.net