There were many wonderful moments at the New South Wales Institute of Architects Awards in July, and among them was when Ali Bounds, co-CEO at architecture firm BVN, and an entire team of collaborators, took to the stage not once but twice to receive awards for a primary school at Green Square, in one of Sydney’s most ambitious urban renewal precincts.
Primary schools, at least those commissioned by the public school system, as this one was, don’t tend to get these kinds of accolades heaped upon them. But this one was special from the get-go.
In a departure from the more conservative designs we’re used to seeing in government schools, this one challenged tradition and explored a new understanding of how schools and community could blend and reinforce connections. In some communities, schools are being re-imagined as commercial hubs – a natural place to co-locate shops or other local facilities that can be accessed before and after drop off and pick up.
At Green Square, Bounds explains in this interview for TFE Learn, there was an opportunity to go further. The ambition here was to connect the school kids with their younger siblings at a day care next door, connect families and older folk through shared sporting or cooking classes, and connect the entire school with its wider location through its deliberately “porous” thoroughfare.
There was also the chance to leverage the design and sustainability achievements of the building as a learning tool for students. “The idea is that the building becomes another teacher,” Bounds says.
In the interview, Bounds credits educator Nicole Molloy, who is now principal of the school and joined the team on stage at the awards, as a driving force in the project.
Molloy was “formative in terms of thinking about how the teaching and learning was going to be unique to this school and the demographic, and so that actually informed our response,” Bounds says.
But as in all building projects, it’s the clients who make the ultimate decisions, and in this, the role was jointly shared by the City of Sydney and School Infrastructure NSW, with contractor Hutchinson Builders.
The final product is a true reflection of the needs and desires of all parties reconciled through the architecture. The desire for shared community facilities led to an interesting solution for the basketball court.
“A basketball court is sort of minimum for a primary school. You really want to provide one basketball court as a facility for kids to play,” Bounds says.
The original thinking was to locate it on the roof in order to conserve the premium ground-floor “real estate” of a highly constrained site of just over 4000 square metres.
“We saw this as an opportunity to provide another piece of community amenity. If the basketball court was on the ground, you could allow the community to use it after hours in a way that, had it been on the roof, you never would have been able to do, because you would have had public traipsing up the school.”
As part of the signal that this was a public space, artist Blak Douglas was commissioned to create an immersive artwork that could be enjoyed by students and the community alike.
Named In the Belly of the Feast, the work references the ancient heritage of the site as a wetland and the bounty of food it would have provided for First Nations people.
Students gather there in the morning and at the end of the day, and when school’s finished it opens up to the general public, Bounds says, “so there are lots of teenage kids playing basketball there late at night and on the weekends”.
Security has been designed in, with the building itself forming the boundary of the site and the community able to enter the basketball court without gaining access to the internal courtyard.
Adding to that connectivity is access, with lots of parents and kids coming by bicycle, Bounds says.
“It’s a very walkable city model; everything is within a radius that kids can access on foot. They can walk up the road to the library, to the train station, they can go to the aquatic centre, and it’s all within walking distance.
But it’s the human connections, between kids of different ages, older generations and the community at large that could well stimulate broader, more diverse relationships, Bounds says.
The physical attributes are also designed to be part of the learning experience, with abundant natural light and “lots of uplifting moments” that “celebrate this idea of learning and the joy of being in that space, so that they feel safe and inspired to keep learning.”
Green design
The school’s green credentials – it was recently certified as a 5 Star Green Star Building – are essential for keeping running costs low and student wellbeing high. Furthermore, they represent the foundation for a healthy learning environment.
Rooftop solar panels supplement energy needs and openable windows encourage cooling breezes and reduce reliance on air conditioning. A generous use of timber, planting and verandas that open from the classrooms for play or learning contribute to creating joyful spaces that enhance wellbeing. A terracotta façade system, called Flexbrick, provides a “hit and miss” brick screen that allows dappled light and breezes to enter but maintains privacy for young children
Internally, the building minimises the use of applied finishes and the dusty pink concrete walls bring a calming light quality and ambience.
“This means the building is quite pink,” Bounds says “but also that those raw exposed materials are still quite uplifting and bring a sense of calm. It doesn’t feel stark and cold, but it did mean that we didn’t need to apply a lot of other finishes.”
And there’s loads of plants to “soften” the building and provide engagement with nature.
As you might expect there’s a lot of interest in the school and principal Nicole Molloy has her hands full showing it off to other educators.
But can other schools so easily reproduce the concept?
Bounds is clearly pleased with the results but adds: “It’s obviously not without its challenges, [especially] the safety and security of a shared ground plane, and how you manage that.
“Shared facilities are not going to work for every site and every school, but here, where the flow of school and community populations is carefully managed through design, it’s a very successful model.”
