Schoolchildren in Westcliff are at the centre of a ground-breaking experiment which could change the way buildings are designed for ever.

Westborough Primary School has been chosen as the site for what is believed to be the world's first cardboard classroom.

The project is spearheaded by Leigh architect Richard Cottrell and a team of structural engineers who were behind the revolutionary design of the Millennium Dome.

They want to demonstrate the theory that there is an alternative to bricks and mortar.

They have chosen the school in Macdonald Avenue because staff and pupils have shown their willingness to take on new ideas, particularly in the way they have transformed their playground with trees, car tyres and a carpeted area.

Subject to planning permission, the building will be erected in the summer and will stand 6m wide and 15m long behind the school next to the playground.

Deputy headteacher Gerry Bennett said children and parents had donated hundreds of cardboard boxes to the scheme in the past few months.

They will make up 90 per cent of the building material with the rest being made up of timber structure beams and a concrete slab floor. The scheme has even won £80,000 in research grant funding from the Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions.

Mrs Bennett said: "To be part of an initiative like this is wonderful. It's amazing to think that in a technological world like this we can still use something as basic as paper and cardboard to make buildings."

Mr Cottrell, 35, who is a partner in London-based architects Cottrell and Vermeulen, has been the school's main architect for the past eight years.

His firm began working with London-based structural engineers Buro Happold last year to find a suitable site to erect the building.

He said: "Cardboard has the potential to be a significant building material. It's cheap and more importantly it's eco-friendly.

"Our task is to design it so that it is recyclable but also waterproof in the way that a milk carton is."

Pioneering - head Jenny Davies with cardboard boxes

Picture: MAXINE CLARKE

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