Central High

 

This was the design capstone project of our final year of the Bachelor degree - The semester was structured as a design competition for the new inner city high school in Prince Alfred Park. Our team was awarded First Place for the Steensen Varming prize for our integration of design and engineering principles. Our strategy considered systems from the start developing a rich multidisciplinary design. 
 

A school between a city and a suburb. A school between a park and a road. A school between a classroom and a workshop. A school between a history and a future. A school that dissolves faculties. A school that is open for all but belongs to no one. At an individual level, profound learning experiences occur at the unexpected juncture of disparate ideas. Central High is spatially organised to facilitate these situations. School is offset from a central hall, which serves to unify the different learning styles between workshop and classroom.

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The school respects the tectonic conditions and materiality of the site, playing with the language of its history. New additions blur the intersection between new and old, questioning the romanticisation of the façade in heritage legislation, and Sydney’s obsession with creating something new at the expense of history.