Mosman High School

Mosman High School Heritage, landscape and the creativity of its students have inspired the state significant extension to Mosman High School on Sydney’s North Shore that lifts its capacity to 1200 students. The outcome embodies the School’s performing arts values, the rich Indigenous significance of the site and a vision of future learning. Mosman has a deep Indigenous history and was used as a performance and learning space for local Aboriginal people, the concept is about reaching out towards the landscape and celebrating the inside and outside together. This is achieved with the bold exterior, set back from busy Military Road to enable the retention of existing mature trees which provide solar shading and noise mitigation. The new building is encased in a brick “crust” built from four brick types, 10 percent of which are glazed, referencing Mosman’s heritage shopping strip while sitting comfortably beside the original school brick building*, now 141 years old. We explored to design within this complex context by doing a brick façade, picking bricks with similar colours to the existing building but arranged in a completely different way – a variety of brick patterns were explored to mimic the existing school building which has a rough sandstone base with definitive brick strips going up the façade, the design of the new brick façade is a contemporary reading of using traditional materials. The four-story building maintains a maximum height of two-story-plus-parapet along the streetscape by strategically setting back the fourth level away from the street façade. Colours inspired by the vibrant local landscape are brought into play with the brick exterior punctuated by a seemingly random but carefully considered pattern of windows framed by bright metal shrouds that pop against the darker background. At several points there are large “peel out” floor-to-ceiling windows that break up the façade and Connect with Country by responding to key views over the Mosman peninsula and Sydney Harbour. Continuing the inside-outside theme, the façade colours project inside, differentiating learning zones – bright for the performance areas and calm blues/greens for traditional subjects such as science. *The original school brick building – Heritage Block A, named as the Arts Block of the existing Mosman High School, built in 1883.