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Fitzroy Gasworks (Senior Campus) (interim name)
School Design Insights
[Wayne Alford, Director, Major Projects, VSBA]
The two existing schools, the Collingwood College and the Fitzroy High Campus, were both at capacity. So we needed to provide an additional school in that community. This site became available as part of a development that our colleagues at Development Victoria were working on and it was centrally located between Collingwood College and Fitzroy High, so it presented a great opportunity for us to build this campus that could be shared between both schools.
The terraces are a key component of this design, to provide the students with access to the outdoor space. That then feeds into the actual education spaces so it is a true indoor outdoor learning environment where students will be able to be working within their classroom one moment and then bleed out to those outdoor terraces to undertake some outdoor learning as well. This is a really good example of design being designed for function first and then form.
The other great thing that has been announced in the recent state budget is that a new four-court stadium will be constructed, connected to the school along with a gym and an additional rooftop court. That project's currently being designed by our colleagues at Development Victoria and will be constructed over the next couple of years.
All the courts are competition grade and are designed to be used for multi-purpose. So total upon completion, there will be six indoor courts, two outdoor courts and a gym.
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Campus design brief
[Paul Thatcher, Education Lead, GHDWoodhead]
Our brief was to provide a new campus for 650 students that were part of the partnership between Collingwood College and Fitzroy High School, into a new modern learning environment to facilitate different programs and a whole interdisciplinary model of learning and teaching.
We also focused on providing a more tertiary orientated learning experience where we have a self-directed and a project-based approach to learning.
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Biggest design challenges
Terrace solution
[Martin Palmer, Architect, GHDWoodhead]
The school's on a very small inner city site. It's a narrow site. One of the greatest design challenges was how to get that recreation space and that green space and that outdoor space into a school that is vertical. What we did is we created a series of terraces on on all levels. Think of these terraces really as just an extension of the inside of the school. It's an extension of the learning and the socialising and the gathering from the inside of the school to the outside of the school.
And on all each of the terraces there’ll be trees, there'll be gardens, in a way we're creating a series of parks in the sky. In a very similar way that a sort of a traditional campus stole school might be, it's just in a vertical format rather than horizontal format.
Some terraces would be for learning and socialising, for eating, meeting up with friends. Other terraces have very specific links to the educational facility within the building. There's a food terrace near the food precinct, there's a kiln near the arts precinct and science terrace near the side slaps.
Having the terraces gives our students greater access to the to the outdoors. It provides more time for the students to spend outdoors.
Given that the driver was to provide this sort of indoor outdoor space for the students, in a way that drove the form of the building.
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Sustainable design
[Martin Palmer, Architect, GHDWoodhead]
Sustainability is really important to these two schools and to these communities. Every design decision was very much based around the student experience. If you look at most buildings you'll see sort of a sea of mechanical ducts on the roof. What we've done is we've actually put in what we call mini plant - putting all that mechanical system inside the building and what it does it actually feeds the part of the building that it is near so that's really sustainable. But what else it does is it frees up all that roof space to put greenery on that is great for the students and the staff to use, but also it cools the building and it cools the environment.
We also really carefully modelled the facade to maximise the daylight that penetrates into the school, and really importantly for learning spaces reduces the glare. The loser panels on the facade - that really came about by trying to provide that optimum thermal comfort but importantly we achieve that comfort by not making the air conditioning work particularly hard and obviously through those terraces being able to get a lot of natural air flow through the building.
The school's going to run purely on electricity - absolutely no gas at all. By having a school run purely on electricity, that can be can be run 100 by green energy.
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Indigenous narrative
[Wayne Alford, Director, Major Projects, VSBA]
This is an exemplar project for us of how we like to do our indigenous consultation. We're really proud of the indigenous consultation we've done on this project and the impacts it's had - the meaningful impacts it's had - on the design outcomes for the school.
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We engaged with the Wurundjeri Woi wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation about how to embed local and cultural values into the design
[Paul Thatcher, Education Lead, GHDWoodhead]
Because we had the landscape terraces, and we had the food technology terrace, and also the entry courtyard, we thought ‘here's a great opportunity for using some indigenous plants’. And then interpreting for the students how those plans were used, what their cultural significance was. And we've used some of those elements to inform the colour schemes of the school. For instance each floor on our journey through the school has a separate colour theme, and these are derived from the manna gum plants, flowers and leaves, and bark.
One of the great features of indigenous artwork and interpretation in the school is the 25 meter long mural in the concourse, which is the main entrance experience for the school. And it's a[n] artwork that includes interpretive elements, dream time stories and some of the cultural elder’s significance.
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How to get around
Wayfinding
[Alexandra Griffeth, Architect, Grimshaw]
It is a large campus and so we have used a number of design techniques to try and break down the feel of that, and to help students navigate through the school. There's an internal laneway, we call it, that comes in from the main entry and leads you down the the first internal concourse and then takes you right into the main amphitheater space - which is the heart of the school - which is a really nice double height space with beautiful timber tiered seating. The heart of the school - it's quite important. I feel like there's a gathering space that's both a space for the whole school together but an informal area where you can stop and pause at the start of the day, meet up with your friends, maybe sit down and have a break.
There's a colour that identifies the main movement path through the building which sort of exists on the floor and the stairs which carries you up and around the circulation space. There's also a colour that identifies each level, and the idea behind that is that as you come in the building or are moving up and down the building you get a really quick snapshot of where you are.
We've also positioned a lift core centrally in the building and so that allows you from anywhere in the school to get really easy access to lifts. So it'll take you all the way up from ground right up to the level six rooftop court.
We've tried to arrange the different spaces in the school in a way that means that people don't have to move up and down the building all day long. To keep the specialist spaces on ground and the upper level, and then the bulk of the school is concentrated on the middle three levels.
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Interdisciplinary learning to build 21st century skills
[Paul Thatcher, Education Lead, GHDWoodhead]
The notion of interdisciplinary learning, especially at this senior secondary college level, will be quite new. On almost every level there are specialist areas relating to technology, science, arts or performing arts for example - but all of those do relate to generalist spaces as well where you can reconfigure a more generalist learning, or small group space, or breakout space associated with those. I really wanted to mix up the idea of just ‘this is a zone where you do one kind of activity or one kind of learning’ to allow lots of different serendipitous things to happen. For instance, you could research something in the resource center, build it as a 3d model in the digital lab, print it out on the 3d printer, have it laser cut in the technology lab, have access to some specialist equipment to to make it - assisted by a lab assistant - and then it could be put on exhibition for a long term period in the maker and project space. The school design encourages independent work and encourages cross-discipline work and working in groups and teams and all of these things help equip the students with 21st century skills.
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Future proof
[Paul Thatcher, Education Lead, GHDWoodhead]
The school design enables a multiplicity of ways of using it over time should the curriculum change or should needs change for remote learning or for in-person groups. The indoor and outdoor environment, the number and types of spaces, and the variety of space, and the adaptability of space - enable the school to adapt and be future proof for different events and opportunities and learning models that may come along.
The video ends with the Victorian School Building Authority logo and website URL (www.schoolbuildings.vic.gov.au).
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