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This project is a note worthy example of the
degree to which new teaching models are
fundamentally spatial in nature. Through
the intelligent and creative adaptive re-use
of a collection of buildings dating back to
1901, Neeson Murcutt have transformed an
outdated single stream Catholic Primary
School, reliant on discrete and isolated
classrooms, into a different kind of open,
flowing learning environment.
The primary intervention is a new building
to the rear of the site, which acts as a
linking and opening device. The creation
of a complex ceiling-scape works to define
zones of operation internally, in place of the
discrete teaching spaces of the past. Existing
classrooms are opened both into these new
expansive learning spaces and to outdoor
courtyards, allowing the children, weather
depending, to work both inside and out.
Central to the scheme is a ‘learning resource
centre’ - a contemporary library space from
where the rest of the school is visible. Spaces
reflect age transition with intimate for early
years learning, to more expansive learning
spaces as the children grow.
Fine-grain detail of the original building
has been appropriately retained, and a
sophisticated lighting system and neutral
colour palette adds warmth to an otherwise
cavernous space.
Photo: Brett Boardman
EDUCATIONALARCHITECTURE
ARCHITECTURE AWARD
St Columba’s Catholic Primary School
Neeson Murcutt Architects
The success of this project comes from its
instrumentality at two scales. As a piece
of urban machinery in the functioning of
the campus master plan and as part of the
consolidation of the new science precinct, this
new addition to UNSW is public in outlook
and situated along one flank of a new alumni
green. The building, which is to have a future
relationship to a new light rail stop has a deep,
generous sunlit colonnade on its alumni green
facing facade, creating significant new amenity
for campus life.
At the scale of research itself, this building
constitutes a piece of infrastructure that
resolves the very precise functional and service
requirements demanded by the physical and
chemical science laboratories housed within it.
The development of an internal central spine
of services that are horizontally and vertically
linked has untethered the usual relationship
between fixed laboratory, write up and office
spaces, allowing for endlessly reconfigurable
‘neighbourhoods’ of research focus to emerge
and dissolve with limited disruption. All of this
is achieved while retaining a confident formal
and material coherency throughout
the project.
Photo:John Gollings
UNSW Materials Science & Engineering
Building
Grimshaw
This project for the renewal of two ‘legacy’
buildings from the early foundation period
of UNSW pays careful attention to the
history and materiality of existing campus
buildings, whilst bringing them forward into
contemporary debates surrounding teaching
and learning spaces. Great care is taken in
retaining materials specific to the original
buildings: the vertical masonry expression,
the chevron concrete soffits at the ground
floor and the circular breezeway masonry
entry screens. These lend identity to the
new building on a campus that has seen an
enormous amount of new work in the last
decade.
An existing building wing of reorganized
academic and research spaces has been
surgical stitched with a new wing of formal
and informal teaching spaces, centered around
a glazed stair - creating coherency out of
what could have been a disparate collection of
elements. Informal student learning spaces are
diverse, materially rich and generous,
and break out spaces allow for an indoor
outdoor relationship that is uncommon in
institutional buildings.
This is a project of small, complex and
rich gestures. Its careful retention and
reconsideration of existing buildings draws
reference from the university’s modest
beginnings, and in doing so demonstrates a
refreshing confidence of purpose.
Photo: Brett Boardman
UNSW, School of Mechanical and
Manufacturing Engineering
Bates Smart
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