Elite boys school Cranbrook School in Sydney’s eastern suburbs has unveiled its new Murray Rose Aquatic and Fitness Centre and the Vicars Centenary Building.
The new Architectus designed project is bold in design, informed by natural landscape surrounding the Bellevue Hill campus and unique in execution with natural earth insulation, and passive solar design and natural earth insulation.
The $125 million project has produced 20,000 square metres of new facilities that are partially subterranean, featuring Hawkesbury sandstone façades and bounced light that responds to the constrained nature of the physical context.
Luke Johnson, Architectus principal and design lead on the project said that secondary schools like Cranbrook are starting to invest more into their learning facilities, that facilitate and support a smoother transition into tertiary education.
“Schools are starting to adopt the strategies that universities already have, to prepare [students] for the next stage of the tertiary environment and give them these spaces that encourage independent learning.”
Design challenges
The school, which was founded in 1918 with Cranbrook House, a sandstone building completed in 1845, came with site constraints including heritage listed buildings, and a lack of available space.
On one side is a steeply sloping hillside on the edge of Bellevue Hill and a playing field. That challenge – a lack of space – meant the buildings were forced to go underground.
Mr Johnson told The Fifth Estate the buildings were “very much” informed by their physical context, which influenced the design aesthetic, with a brief to “create a homogenous precinct in its materiality”.
“The integration within the existing context is the biggest success,” Mr Johnson said.
“In approaching this design, the challenge we were conscious of was belonging to place and a sense of connection to Country that was generated by respect for landscape.”
“In approaching this design, the challenge we were conscious of was belonging to place and a sense of connection to Country that was generated by respect for landscape.”
The architects wanted it to be “a rock pool within a cave,” with sandstone sculpted by the elements to appear “eroded by water,” “expressive of the Sydney coastline,” covered with earth and with species of native plantings like Angophora costata (Sydney red gum) “echoing the landscape they are found in”.
“Belonging to place means conserving it,” Mr Johnson said. “It will have a longer lifespan.”
How to take an Aquatic Centre underground
The Murray Rose Aquatic and Fitness Centre includes a 50-metre pool, sports hall, gym and car park.
Going underground posed a problem: a lack of daylight and ventilation. From a passive point of view, the site has an optimised orientation to the north facing New South Head Road – the main through-line of the area.
This side – with the only windows – is framed by sandstone, and used as an aperture to bounce daylight in off the forecourt and reflect off the underside of the structure, back into the pool environment.
It’s a “low tech, sensible approach to bringing daylight into a cavernous space. It works really effectively”.
This trick was partially inspired by the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology in Lisbon, Portugal, designed by Stirling Prize-winning British architect Amanda Levete.
“It must be a controlled environment. Aquatic centres are by nature corrosive because of the character of water in the pool, and the humidity if you don’t balance temperature”
“The top lip of the arch projects forward so in summer it provides an eyebrow shade to an eyelid, keeping direct solar loading off the glass so you don’t get heat generation off the glass from solar radiation.
“But in winter light comes all the way in and reaches the pool surface.”
It is notoriously difficult to design swimming facilities that are environmentally sustainable and energy efficient.
Aquatic centres demand control: “It must be a controlled environment. Aquatic centres are by nature corrosive because of the character of water in the pool, and the humidity if you don’t balance temperature,” Mr Johnson said.
To control humidity, the architects included an air locked door system to restrict the flow of air.
“It’s a very stable internal environment… a bit like a wine cellar”
To minimise heat loss while maintaining natural daylight – daylight which Mr Johnson said people “love” – is “a tradeoff”.
In a well-insulated environment like at Cranbrook, that challenge is overcome by natural insulation on five sides of the cube, and natural daylight coming from the sixth side.
The slab that holds up the playing field has a layer of insulation. Additionally, being surrounded by earth provides natural insulation. To heat the pool there’s an electric heating system, but Mr Johnson said there is very little temperature fluctuation throughout the year so aside from this no additional power needs to be employed to address condensation or heating and cooling concerns.
This results in a “very stable internal environment… a bit like a wine cellar”.
The Vicars building
In addition to the new aquatic centre the Vicars Centenary Building features new teaching and learning spaces, a theatre, a chapel and an assembly hall.
The building also has a grass-covered roof, which provides natural insulation, and is similarly semi-subterranean, surrounded on three sides by earth “carved into the hillside,” with a northwest orientation and deep projecting terraces that provide shade.
Natural ventilation through a flue system in the building provides fresh air to the south side, while the classrooms all face the open side with additional mechanical ventilation ensuring students are getting sunlight and fresh air.
It is designed to give students a taste of higher education – providing autonomous learning spaces to bring young people “into an environment where they are in control of their learning,” Johnson says.
The flipside of wonderful infrastructure for private schools
The Cranbrook project among those of other private schools have come under attack in recent times with the NSW government recently accused by the NSW Teachers Federation of overfunding private schools by $850 million over five years and underfunding public schools by $2 billion every year.
Cranbrook, which offers schooling for boys from early learning to secondary day and boarding, and has annual fees equivalent to the national minimum wage, was singled out for using taxpayer dollars to upgrade its 25-metre pool because the original pool “wasn’t very good for water polo”.
I thought this was a joke, but then I realised it wasn’t April Fools Day! Did I read that right – $125m on a swimming pool? Well done Cranebrook. A staggering appropriation from the pubic purse to the entitled few.
The funding was paid by school alumni donations and an increase in school fees which continue for all students regardless of whether they use the facilities or not.
There was little, if any, public funding for this project.
The privelege in some niches of this country knows no bounds.