The newest addition to Mount Alexander School, a secondary college on unceded Wurundjeri Nation in Naarm’s/Melbourne’s inner-north, is a five-storey, brick-red beacon that establishes a sequence of significant visible and bodily connections with the present campus, wider suburb, and CBD past. Responding to the faculty’s revolutionary pedagogical method and values, the mid-rise, vertical-school constructing additionally foregrounds a way of longevity and stability by its materiality and cautious references to context. Designed by Kosloff Structure in shut session with the college group and challenge stakeholders, it supplies a formidable vary of partaking and adaptable studying and administration areas, whereas constantly wanting previous the sides of its condensed campus.
One of many oldest state faculties in Victoria, Mount Alexander School sits on the positioning of Flemington Nationwide Faculty, which was established in 1858. In 2016, the college moved to a vertical class mannequin, growing a give attention to co-designed, bespoke curricula choices for every scholar and emphasizing scholar company. Following the completion of the brand new amenities, it’s working in the direction of an enrolment of greater than 900 college students – a 50 p.c enhance from 2019.
Julian Kosloff and Stephanie Bullock, co-founders and administrators of Kosloff Structure, have labored on quite a lot of tasks with the Victorian Faculty Constructing Authority (VSBA) lately. They understood the necessity for the brand new areas to assist specialist programming and the college’s revolutionary construction with out compromising the constructing’s means to react to altering wants in the long term. “Pedagogical approaches fluctuate considerably, and Mount Alexander School responds on to the college’s extremely student-led curriculum focus, whereas a easy column grid and the utilization of the exterior precast panels as load-bearing parts frees the constructing as much as be tailored and modified internally sooner or later,” Bullock says.
The constructing runs throughout the positioning on an east–west axis, reaching out in the direction of Mount Alexander Street and the Melbourne CBD, however digging down on the Wellington Avenue boundary and reconfiguring the college’s fundamental entry to this extra pedestrian-friendly residential edge. Connections to the red-brick character of the suburb grow to be additional obvious right here, with the red-clay hues of the challenge’s precast concrete facade recalling – with out replicating – the fabric qualities of colonial heritage constructions, together with the small substation on college grounds, and the police station and former fireplace station additional down the road.
The concave types that wrap across the constructing quantity gently push and pull, taking part in with total scale and proportion whereas subtly pinching at corners and softening edges. The western elevation leans into the visibility of the construction within the panorama. Even at its most distinguished factors, nevertheless, the constructing by no means really expresses itself as a five-storey construction. As a substitute, the panels set up big orders, spanning throughout and grouping collectively the second and third flooring, in addition to the fourth ground and plant space on the roof terrace above. The blond brick of the challenge’s floor ground retreats below the primary facade, creating coated connections between curved amphitheatres, landscaped areas, and visible and performing arts studios. On this means, the constructing embraces civic-scale parts with out dropping sight of the size of the campus and the residential character of its western edge.
The power and readability of the facade belies the excessive stage of effectivity constructed into the system, by way of each development and total photo voltaic efficiency. As Kosloff explains, seemingly free-flowing variations in panel geometry have been generated utilizing simply 5 precast concrete moulds “that have been shifted, rotated and flipped to create a sequence of permutations and mixtures that reply to express sun-shading and body key views.” An total window-to-wall ratio of 21 p.c, with 3 p.c to the south facade, ends in environment friendly vitality use and occupant consolation.
The primary entry is by way of a ramp from Wellington Avenue alongside the northern fringe of the constructing’s first ground, main into the lobby and accompanying administrative areas. Past the lobby, the bespoke, vertically built-in nature of Mount Alexander School’s curriculum begins to register extra clearly, from spatial planning selections by to smaller particulars like signage. Quite than being restricted to single-age courses, college students can design their very own curriculum and select from many electives based mostly on their pursuits and desires. A lot of the constructing’s higher ranges, in addition to the bottom ground, include a mixture of common school rooms and specialist science, robotics, artwork and design amenities. These educating and studying areas wrap round central widespread areas and circulation, profiting from pure gentle and views on the edges of the plan. The one seen reference to scholar 12 months ranges is the inclusion of a senior widespread room on the fourth ground.
Early in our dialogue, Bullock spoke concerning the observe’s intention for the challenge to mirror the aspirations and values of the college curriculum by being “extra aligned with a tertiary establishment than a secondary college atmosphere.” An important side of this technique concerned not permitting the structure to “speak down” to college students however, relatively, to assist the rising sense of autonomy and company that the college goals to foster. Upon reflection, I ponder if I underestimated the extent to which this type of concept could possibly be made legible throughout the expertise of the constructing. Maybe I assumed that the fantastically detailed, fluted facade may encase a well-designed however considerably customary set of secondary college areas. As a substitute, Mount Alexander School delivers on the promise of its exterior, containing a central core that’s deeply atmospheric – nearly theatrical. The beating coronary heart of the constructing, the core’s inside stair is a moody pink thread that’s as severe and deep as it’s daring and wealthy.
At every of the challenge’s higher ranges, the pink stair meets widespread areas that connect with school rooms across the fringe of the plan. Rust-red metal frames mark out locations for group work with out closing down the area, whereas small, upholstered alcoves carve out moments for particular person college students. The constructing’s school rooms, studios and labs are white, shiny and vigorous, however not at all playful within the conventional sense. With out pulling an excessive amount of consideration away from the inside, views from class- rooms to the east take within the Wellington Avenue tree cover and surrounding suburb, whereas longer views to the south- east join again to town skyline.
Writing lately concerning the potential for city faculties to function inside broader social infrastructure networks, Jos Boys and Anna Jeffery recognized a sequence of design alternatives for architects, policymakers and communities. 1 These alternatives converse extra immediately about safety considerations and the bodily limitations to group engagement in city faculties. Nonetheless, the notion of “constructing ‘bridges’ not fences” appears significantly related to methods through which academic structure may assist secondary college college students to place themselves in relation to broader contexts as a part of their each day expertise. By prioritizing moments of connection and identification at Mount Alexander School, Kosloff Structure’s method makes a case for the sorts of bridges which are constructed when college students are inspired to look past the sides of their campus – and even perhaps past their time at secondary college – to see themselves as energetic contributors in each their training and their group.
— Alex Brown is an architect and senior lecturer at Monash Artwork, Design and Structure. Her analysis explores twentieth-century and up to date artwork–structure relationships, in addition to structure and radicality from the Nineteen Sixties onwards.