Yatala Labour Prison Redevelopment | Grieve Gillett Architects in association with Guymer Bailey Architects
The groundbreaking Yatala Labour Prison sets a new benchmark, transforming thinking about correctional facilities. Rooted in trauma-informed design, GGA integrated a range of measures to normalise environments to reduce stress, demonstrating a deep understanding of how the physical environment affects identity, worth and healing.
Originally intended as three equal sized new buildings to accommodate the additional 270 high-security beds, GGA proposed a revolutionary Therapeutic Wing broken into smaller human-scale environments tailored to vulnerable cohorts. While adhering to high-security requirements, biophilic design principles including natural light, natural materials, acoustic treatments, nature motifs and landscape views foster wellbeing, while choice of space indoors and outdoors promotes dignity and personal agency.
The innovative split Visits Centre with dedicated family room, fosters family connections that are a vital component toward mitigating reoffending. A new Staff Wellbeing Centre, Admissions and Catering & Operations facility complete the major redevelopment to support a new era in justice.
Whitefriars Catholic School – Caritas Building | Detail Studio
The Caritas Building at Whitefriars Catholic School is the result of a collective vision to create and deliver a high quality and engaging learning environment for junior primary students and educators in which to thrive. The materials are bold and striking creating a strong connection between external and internal spaces that enhances the school identity. The contemporary architectural language, predominantly defined by the textural, articulated precast panels, work in harmony with the existing school buildings and adjacent residential streetscape. The rich landscape design connects seamlessly with the building and interior providing important opportunities for indoor/ outdoor learning. Child-centred spaces promote happy engaged learners through connections and participation within the School and greater community.
UNISA Enterprise Hub | Swanbury Penglase
The adaptive reuse and revitalisation of the local heritage listed former warehouse at 9 Light Square, Adelaide accommodates the collected research and industry outreach enterprises of the University of South Australia.
Following the discovery that the building was of the earliest remaining intact reinforced concrete buildings in South Australia, the core design principle for its transformation has been to recognise and celebrate that structure while undertaking minimal change to the original fabric.
By housing the Universitys Enterprise Hub, the buildings life has been sustained and recent tangible moments of the buildings history also revealed, including the repurposed brass birdcage from the nightclub entry to frame a new collaboration space.
This project has given a previously dilapidated building a new use where the recognition and revealing of its history has provided a new level of richness to its occupants and the community.
Tiwu Kumangka (Blackwood Library and Community Centre) | DesignInc
Tiwu Kumangka’ celebrates the coming together of community services and a library within the hills-based suburb of Blackwood. The project is a catalyst for the revitalisation of the town centre, catering to the needs of locals and responding to the council’s vision for a vibrant and active public realm. Tiwu Kumangka responds to its local context with a natural material palette and architectural details referencing the wide variety of landscapes within the City of Mitcham. The building’s scale, visibility, and accessibility invite the community to wander through its central ‘street’, providing pedestrian access to the adjoining street, shops, cafes, and Waite Street Reserve. The transparency and permeability of the building’s design promote the shared experiences and activities within. Shifts in volume and scale invite enquiry, connection, creativity and exploration through flexible community spaces.
Three Garden House | PARABOLICA
Designed to suit the lifestyle of our clients in the twilight period of their lives, and celebrate their life-long passion for gardening, the home immerses the inhabitant within nature.
The dwelling was conceived as an introspective home; one which focuses inwards with a courtyard garden at its heart. The front garden is home to native plants and trees which are in harmony with the surrounding landscape of the hills. The remaining land is populated with the many diverse plants, flowers and fruit trees that were relocated from our clients’ previous garden.
The layout of the dwelling is based on a simple, rectilinear floor plan. Circulation is wrapped around the internal courtyard which is visible through large, protected areas of glazing. A subdued material palette enhances the greenery and contributes to a peaceful and immersive experience of the home.
Sunkissed Higgins | RADS
Aussie culture has always been bound to allure of the coast. Sunny days lathered in coconut-scented lotions. Sun blushed skin becomes tanned over the longer days. Rising early to hit the surf before the wind picks up. Salty hair, sandy feet and sinking cold Coronas with friends while the kids run amok.
Welcome to Sunkissed Higgins: A home for 80’s Babies who skipped the big smoke to live the coastal dream.
Yiew!
Stradbroke Primary School – Early Learning Hub | Das Studio
Located adjacent Morialta Conservation Park in Rostrevor, Stradbroke Primary School incorporates Walker Learning principles to offer an inquiry-based, transdisciplinary, student-centred curriculum. The project brief sought to replace an aged building with learning spaces and nature play for Stradbroke’s Reception students, to align facilities with the forward-thinking pedagogical approach of the School.
Prioritisation of the direct learning outcomes of built form result in a building that acts as a beacon for the possibilities of curiosity, inquiry and play whilst simultaneously connecting to the surrounding built and natural environments in a manner that feels of its place. Siting, planning and materiality all contribute equally to this outcome.
A collaborative relationship between the design team, client and key stakeholders and a creative approach to project problem solving unlocked value that allowed for refurbishment works to adjacent Year 1 spaces, creating an Early Learning Hub for the School that equitably connects the junior cohort.
St John’s Campus Redevelopment | Brown Falconer
The redevelopment of Concordia’s St John’s Campus has transformed the primary school through new learning environments that bring the College together, reimagine the campus and provide the foundation for improved teaching and learning practices.
This project presented a significant opportunity to co-create a unified precinct with College leadership, utilising a collaborative visioning process to generate design principles founded on 4 core ideas:
_One College
_Every space is a place to learn
_The physical environment supports the learning process
_Connection to Nature
Briefed to provide new facilities to support strategic growth across years 4-6, expand the ELC, and improve connectivity between classrooms and the outdoors, we explored this and their existing facilities through their educational philosophy and developed a masterplan with upgraded junior primary learning areas, new ELC, upper primary learning building, resource centre and activity hall with a design narrative that celebrates nature through form, materiality, colour and maximising greenspace.
Springbank Secondary College | Thomson Rossi
The challenge at Springbank Secondary College was to create an environment with no barriers to learning for a culturally, physically, and neurodiverse community without the slightest perception of discrimination. The new environment needed to be beautiful, practical, serviceable, elegant and welcoming, as well as catering for unique needs in a discrete way, allowing everyone to enjoy a contemporary, state of the art learning facility that delivers a high-end curriculum.
Internally, in order to achieve these spaces, the design explored the integration of circulation space into the Learning Areas, eliminating corridors and allowing a range of different breakout and retreat spaces to be created; providing significant flexibility and opportunity for inclusion across the whole campus.
Externally, a sculptural COLA announces the school’s presence as a promenade leading to the Basketball Stadium, strategically located adjacent the Tower Arts Centre, allowing an extension of performance activities to an outdoor venue.
St Peter’s College Big Quad Rejuvenation | Matthews Architects
Learning is always a process of change, and when we are young it is a process of growing and growing up. This new era of the Big Quad precinct has been shaped to support young people who are going through such changes. The design embraces them within a history and a present that they are a living part of, reminding them that there are futures to be valued and stories to be written. Each space captures the movement of light throughout the day and across seasons, the shifting of the living environment around them and celebrates the passage of time. In this way the design celebrates the continuity of human experience and the valuable connection between past, present and futures.
