Urquhart Park Primary School



Urquhart Park Primary School0

Urquhart Park Primary School1

Urquhart Park Primary School2

Urquhart Park Primary School3

 Thanks to the stimulus package, there’s a lot of money around at the moment for sub-$3m school building projects. One of the more contested aspects of this Federal Government program has been the use of “best practice” design templates to rationalise and accelerate the building process for all public schools. Schools are asked to nominate the type of facility they would like, choose from amongst a number of templates, and customise according to need. Various objections, both practical and ideological, have been raised against the way the program is being run. But few objectors refer to the specific attributes of the templates themselves, or note the huge disparity in design quality across the country.

While other states rely on templates drawn up by their own government departments, Victoria hired two established architecture practices with a track record on education projects – Gray Puksand and Hayball – to help draw up the templates. Progressive, and with an eye on sustainable building, Victoria’s templates are easily the best in the nation.

To get a sense of what “best practice” school design might look like, we can turn to Gray Puksand’s recent award-winning work for Urquhart Park Primary School. The project was unconnected with the federal government building program and is not drawn from a template, but it’s an exemplary instance of the design philosophy Gray Puksand will soon be spreading to hundreds of schools across the state.

The project is the first in a two-stage redevelopment of an existing Ballarat primary school, dotted with outdated temporary facilities and suffering an old and ill-fitting school hall. The school was radically re-imagined. After a comprehensive master planning process, several structures were demolished on the north-western corner of the site, along with a multipurpose space which hindered physical and visual connections in the middle of the site. The firm developed the concept of new, small scale learning neighbourhoods, designed for clusters of around 75–100 students. A series of three neighbourhoods was planned, each with a slightly different mix of facilities within a similar footprint and architectural aesthetic. These facilities were designed to maximise opportunities for good orientation, minimise solar loads to the western and eastern façades, and maximise opportunities for visual and physical connections between the new buildings, the broader school, and the parklands beyond.

Delivered in stages, the project began with a dedicated senior years’ neighbourhood, and a specialist art, drama and music neighbourhood. Architecturally, the learning spaces were developed with an overriding sense of simplicity and transparency. Each learning neighbourhood was planned with studio or specialist learning areas arranged around a central, spacious collaboration space. They can be configured via a series of large sliding panels. The smaller scale of the studios assists in establishing a welcoming home base environment, while the larger collaborative spaces encourage interaction both between peers and across different year levels. The building clusters are also positioned to create worthwhile interstitial spaces for outdoor learning. An outcome of these more “public” shared spaces has been the emergence of a noticeably more collegial atmosphere amongst the students.

With shaded, high-level operable glazed louvres and high-level ceiling fans, the spaces are naturally ventilated. There was particular attention paid to acoustics, with high absorbency materials, quality ceiling and wall finishes, and acoustic wall dividers allowing various activities to happily coexist within the one neighbourhood.

The structural solution for the new buildings was a mixture of both steel framing and light timber truss, chosen to minimise the impact of high steel prices on the project budget. Essentially the building forms were derived utilising a central large “covered shed” structure with open plan studio spaces inserted beneath the overhang of the main roof. This arrangement permitted the contractor to erect almost identical steelwork for each structure, minimising differences in shop drawings and later detailing issues. Higher quality materials were used sparingly to maximum effect, such as the dark glazed brick used as a striking base course for the sheet cladding material.

The project, which has won awards both nationally and internationally, has reinvigorated the school and the local community, and points the way towards a renaissance in Australian schools architecture. +


 

1. Streetscape elevations are each slightly offset, following a curve in the road alignment. 2. Substantial use of profiled sheet steel emphasises, to dramatic effect, overall building profile and clearly assists in defining an architectural built edge to the streetscape. 3. Large sliding doors allow learning studios to each open into a central collaborative space. 4. Both learning neighbourhoods are positioned to maximise opportunities to claim spaces between for a variety of external learning settings providing valuable new recreation areas.

PHOTOGRAPHY by Peter Clarke – Latitude