Carey Grammar Middle School | Architectus

Located on an elevated site at the busy corner of Wrixon Street and Barkers Road in the leafy Melbourne suburb of Kew, Carey Grammar’s new Middle School Building presented a unique architectural opportunity to promote the School to the wider community. The redevelopment is a key component of Carey’s strategic plan to stimulate enrolment growth to 800 students for Years 7 to 9. The building is defined by three key design elements: the formal determination of the building by its context; a fully developed education plan; and the creation of a spatial framework that encourages multiple learning behaviours.

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.

Carey Grammar’s new Middle School Building is defined by three key design elements: the formal determination of the building by its context; a fully developed education plan; and the creation of a spatial framework that encourages a variety of different learning behaviours.

Architectus developed an Education Design Brief that responded to the specific needs of Carey’s Middle School students and their teachers. It described 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. Learning and teaching activities extend out from formal learning labs, to encourage crossover between subject areas and to 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.