To balance, quiet rooms for retreat and study were also an integral part of the system of rooms. Each of the learning communities, or ‘neighbourhoods’, provide access to an outdoor learning area, access to quiet spaces, and access to technology. Teachers can reconfigure the spaces however they need; the design enables change and ensures flexibility of space.

Incorporating the older buildings into a modern, highly adaptive school had its challenges, but it has added a great deal to the design, and to the community. Large windows in the new buildings provide a direct visual connection to the park, while interior and exterior colour choices reference the colours from the parklands.

External ‘blades’ have been incorporated to mimic the vertical lines of the existing heritage buildings and the surrounding trees. A large flat roof on the new two-storey building – with a nod to modernism — helps to anchor the building into its heritage and park contexts.

“It’s a unique setting, surrounded by parkland, so we didn’t want to create a site response that made it look like the fortress within the park. In fact, the opposite; it had to be a very permeable, connected set of buildings. And education is very much about that connectedness” explains Robert Puksand, Founding Partner at Gray Puksand.