Brighton Grammar School – St Andrew’s Exchange

A new shared development between St Andrews Parish and Tennis Club and Brighton Grammar School, this project sought to create a site of reciprocity. A place for sharing values and beliefs, for constructing and communicating knowledge, and for engaging with people, ideas, and culture. The building and landscape design bring together the Parish community of St Andrew’s Church and the School community, by creating physical connections between their respective endeavours of worship, education, and recreation. The new building will strengthen all ties to site and locality and enable new ways for boys to experience creative arts, science, design, and technology. The overarching concept of ‘exchange’, which frames our design response, is underpinned by four key design concepts: respect, integrity, porosity and transparency: respect for site (heritage, buildings and landscape) and for each other; integrity in honest expression of form, function and materiality; porosity which describes the nature and experience of space, which allows physical and visual connectivity; and transparency which is central to visual connectivity and accountability. The building will be used to create windows into the life of the School, making learning visible. Design thinking was adopted by the School as a means of helping students develop the kinds of skills required to address complex social, economic, technological, and political issues in the new global age. A diverse spatial environment developed that challenges conventional approaches to timetabled space in support of a problem-based, iterative learning practice.