Carey Baptist Grammar School

Background and Context Located on an elevated site at the busy corner of Wrixon Street and Barkers Road in the leafy Melbourne suburb of Kew, Carey Baptist Grammar’s new Middle School Building presents a unique architectural opportunity to promote the School to the wider community. Redevelopment of the existing Middle School is a key component of Carey’s strategic plan to stimulate enrolment growth to 800 students. The notion that the School should engage with and respond to its context is fundamental to this project, and something encouraged by the local planning authorities. Our scheme is the antithesis of the existing building which turns its back to the local community. The new building is an outward celebration of Carey’s active, engaging, student-centred and collaborative culture of learning. Education Design Brief In collaboration with school leaders, students and teachers, Architectus developed an Education Design Brief that responds to the specific needs of Carey’s Middle School students and their teachers. It describes six interconnected learning precincts, each of which is a physical expression of the subject it hosts and the learning experiences and resources students and teachers can expect to find there. Five of the learning precincts are also home to the ten school houses, each one a welcoming social home base for two house groups. Each learning precinct is composed from a wide variety of purposeful learning settings and clearly articulated circulation paths. Clearly-identified house offices and learning development offices are distributed throughout the building emphasising the important pastoral care and learning support roles that Carey teachers play. Each precinct also functions as a place for subject teachers (e.g. maths) to share ideas and strategies through collaborative practice. Custom-built joinery and carefully selected loose furniture are used to create a diverse range of learning settings in each precinct. Learning and teaching activities extend out from formal learning labs into informal learning zones, which are intended to encourage crossover between subject areas and promote inter-disciplinary learning investigations. This spatial diversity reflects the variety of professional and social relationships that students and teachers nominated as important to their sense of personal identity, belonging and wellbeing. In plan, the more formal learning labs (driven by timetabling demands) can be transformed, with the aid of generous openings, vertical connectivity and staggered interfaces between spaces, to create an interconnected learning landscape. These strategies enable a fluidity of ideas and student movement not possible within traditional closed classroom environments. Architectural Expression The Middle School scheme is premised on three key design elements: the formal determination of the building by its context; a fully developed education plan, and the creation of an architectural framework to support the education plan. The new building’s predominantly two-storey, L-shaped form is inserted between and strongly connected to Raymond Hall on the west, and Memorial Great Hall on the east. Its footprint responds to an approved master plan and its three-dimensional form is deemed to be generally in accordance with the volume described by the master plan. The building is elevated to the north for optimal solar orientation and visual connection to the sports courts and recreation zone. The eastern facade creates a new, more formal public entrance to the Middle School, while students are encouraged to enter from the north. The western aspect mixes new with old, using landscaping to create a more harmonious mix of development within a largely residential street. The southern elevation is a physical expression of learning on busy Barkers Road. The pivot point where the arms of the building meet creates a natural intersection of the learning precincts. This is a direct response to Carey’s social and interdisciplinary approach to education. The building mass is disrupted at its ‘waist’ to create a series of split-levels that respond to significant falls across the site and create connections with the two halls on either side. Natural daylight and views are prioritised with generous glazing, skylights and strong connections to outdoor landscaping, play areas and learning settings such as a distinctive ‘keyhole’ courtyard at the heart of the plan. The south and west elevations comprise a series of boxes alternately slipped in and out within a fabricated steel frame that outwardly express the diagram of the internal plan. The proportions and modularity of these primary forms are a direct manifestation of the internal spatial requirements of the Education Design Brief, and a response to the fine physical grain of the building’s suburban context. Along the northern edge of the building, a large external covered walkway spans the full width of the upper level, providing protection for north-facing full-height glazing, a viewing gallery overlooking the MacAfee Tennis Courts and a northern avenue that forms part of the primary civic axis through the school campus. In the northeast corner of the plan the walkway terminates in a sculptural staircase, which is bookended on either side by strong concrete elements that rise and turn the corner to transition seamlessly into a marching colonnade that marks the main entry point to the Middle School. Overhead, a large entry canopy completes the formal composition and provides shelter for large outdoor gatherings and social interactions. The building’s external and internal material palettes are authentic expressions of materiality and construction methods. Black painted steel, smooth concrete, glass and homogenous compressed cement sheet create the building form. Internally, natural plywood and soft furnishings provide a warm backdrop for the colour and life of students’ and teachers’ activities and interactions. In response to the Client’s vision for a project of long-lasting significance and impact, the new building’s design strives for timeless visual and spatial qualities that allow it to sit comfortably in an ever-adapting campus of eclectic architectural styles and forms. Its highly-transparent, floating upper volume is anchored to the earth by a series of sculptural elements including a dramatic concrete vault along its northern edge and two semi-enclosed stairs that taper to the ground plane in the northeast and southwest. Each of these elements help to establish the new building as an iconic marker for Carey and its broader community.