 | BRISBANE GIRLS GRAMMAR Social spaces and
learning spaces are
integrated in the
dramatic, permeable
forms of the Creative
Learning Centre
by m3architecture.
REVIEW SANDRA KAJI-O’GRADY
PHOTOGRAPHY JON LINKINS
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The central
public space of the
Creative Learning
Centre at Brisbane
Girls Grammar
showing the visual
connection between
all levels.
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The western
facade of the new
building engages
with the movement
of the traffic.
A moiré effect is
produced by the
combination of
bronze anodized
aluminium slats
and an inner wall
of white with black
vertical stripes.
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The new
building as seen
from the playing
fields of the Brisbane
Boys Grammar
School.
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Detail of the
optical illusion
produced by the
western facade.
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Concrete blade
walls fan out along
the building’s highly
articulated eastern edge.
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Looking
into the central
circulation space,
showing the
dramatic play of
light and shadow.
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The in-situ
unpainted concrete
surfaces are
decorated with
radiating bands of
pastel colours on
the underside of
each concrete slab.
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Students’ work
is displayed in a
gallery space along
the length of the
dining hall.
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Rehearsal space.
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Ample natural
light is provided
in the lower-level
rehearsal rooms.
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M3architecture is exceedingly talented and
refreshingly modest. According to Michael Banney,
the project architect of the new Creative Learning
Centre at the Brisbane Girls Grammar School (BGGS),
the young practice was commissioned only because
the client anticipated a much smaller project. The undertaking became more ambitious as the
architects worked with the school, initially on a new
long-term master plan for the campus, which was
crowded, and subsequently on the development of
an optimal brief for a new building. In time the new
building expanded beyond consolidating the creative
arts facilities to include staff parking, a dining hall
and gallery, a staffroom and additional performance
and rehearsal spaces.
Yet the commissioning of m3architecture was
no accident. In previous residential and educational
work, m3architecture had demonstrated an
extraordinary capacity for architectural invention
within the constraints of an unpromising brief or
inadequate budget. Projects such as the University
of Queensland’s Micro Health Laboratory, with its
textured brick tapestry, earned them a place in the
Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture
and in the Australian Pavilion at the 2006 Venice
Biennale. The practice has become known for its
playful and graphic manipulation of perception
– tactics informed by contemporary visual arts,
which place them in the company of architects such
as Herzog and de Meuron or, closer to home, Lyons
Architects. The dynamic principal of BGGS, Amanda
Bell, was determined to get an unapologetically
contemporary solution that made a bold architectural
contribution to Brisbane. Having previously worked
as an arts advisor to government and as director of the
National Trust’s gallery in Sydney, Ms Bell made an
informed client representative.
The architects and the school agreed that new
buildings on the campus should have their own
character without overshadowing or imitating the
original 1880s school buildings on Gregory Terrace,
with which the school had become associated. They began, however, not with an architectural
image, but with close analysis of the challenges
presented by the fragmented and steeply sloping site,
the school culture and the potential for crossovers
in the programmatic mix. The desire for internal
connection was emphasized, pragmatically to
facilitate access between buildings with different floor
levels, but also between the girls and between the
creative arts and other disciplines and activities.
In plan it becomes clear that the spatial diagram
is born from the intersection of two grids – one from
the boundaries to the west and north and the other,
at about 60 degrees to this, from the alignment
of Gregory Terrace and the old buildings. Entry from
the southern side of the campus at the level of the old
main building cuts diagonally into the building at the
fourth floor of the new. The diagonal cut has also been
used to frame views across and beyond the campus,
with concrete blade walls seeming to fan out from
this incision. The inclusion of the school’s dining hall
at this mid-level has been successful in connecting
the whole school.
Brisbane Girls Grammar was also concerned
with its external relationships beyond the campus. Ms Bell sees the school as an organization which
“can contribute positively to wider issues and public
debate” as well as philanthropy. The building was to
be outward-looking at the same time as it reinforced
internal connections. On the northern edge of the
campus, the site is bordered by train lines, a busway
and a six-lane highway. There was both the challenge
of acoustic pollution and the potential for broad
visibility. The western face, visible at some distance
from the highway, theatrically engages the movement
of the traffic. Using an outer sunscreen of bronze
anodized aluminium slats against an inner wall of
white with black vertical stripes, a moiré effect is
triggered. The building appears to melt and wobble
in circular waves as the viewer passes, leading some
puzzled locals to inquire of the architects as to its
mechanics. From a position on the highway where
both the 1880s buildings and the new building come
into view, the ovoid forms of the optical illusion neatly
align in height and radius with the arched upperstorey
windows of the old brick building. The optical
facade also forms the edge of the playing fields of the
neighbouring Brisbane Boys Grammar and one can
only wonder what this mirage of undulating curves
does to the feverish minds of some teenaged boys.
While the western facade is a dramatic billboard
of iconic potential, the building is no decorated shed. The eastern side of the building is a highly articulated
composition of expansive balconies, courtyards and
stairs under a translucent roof. In photographs and
plans the arrangement of stairs, landings and balconies
takes on an almost Piranesian aspect, but it actually
allows direct and convivial circulation between the
floors. It is interesting to observe that the lifts and fire
escape stairs are almost never used, while groups of
girls occupy the more dramatic spaces of the central
public space and take advantage of the circling
balconies as points of performance and viewing.
The school wanted its buildings to support the
social and creative development of teenage girls,
and all of us who have ever been there will recall the
ceaseless and often fraught negotiation of friendships
as well as the intensity of those friendships. While
architecture alone may not be able to carry out social
engineering, a building like this can alleviate some of
the more extreme situations of exclusion and tribalism
through the way students are constantly brought
into spaces that are at once permeable and intimate. Most of all, the building works hard to integrate social
and learning spaces. From any point in the centre of
the building, it is possible to take in diagonal views
through to spaces of rehearsal and performance, as
well as classrooms.
The lowest level of learning spaces consists
of double-height rehearsal and performance spaces
for strings, choir and band. Alongside stores and
smaller teaching spaces, these occupy the largest
footprint and deepest plan. Three flights down from
the main entry level where the refectory is located,
and six floors below the atrium roof, these spaces
could have been dark, yet the roof was conceived
as a large skylight and soft light filters down to the
lowest level. There is also a strong visual relationship
back to the floors above. The strings rehearsal room
is particularly attractive, with a dark, almost black wall
forming a dramatic background to the instruments. Acoustics in the adjacent choir room are reportedly
so good that the choir is in danger of becoming lazy.
The learning facilities are impressively equipped
and designed, yet it is in the dining hall that the visitor
truly appreciates the increasing gap between facilities
in the private school sector and the universities
to which many of these students will eventually
graduate. Particular attention has been paid to the
refinement of finishes and quality of space in the
hall. The school’s conviction was that if the girls were
given dignified public spaces then they would treat
them with respect. This has been the case. Students’
work is professionally displayed in a double-height
gallery along the length of the western wall and the
girls sit at round tables on white chairs. The polished
concrete floors, white walls and delicate-looking fabric
airconditioning ducts are in an impeccable state.
Elsewhere, materials and finishes are deliberately
less refined than in the dining hall or performance
and rehearsal spaces. The architects and the client
were interested in the ways in which the building,
through the rawness of its material surfaces, might
suggest further embellishment through occupation
and, possibly, installation and performance. In-situ
unpainted concrete surfaces are used externally
throughout, and the only ornamentation is radiating
bands of pastel colours painted on the underside
of each concrete slab. Coupled with the expression
of structural blades and floors, the eastern facade
possesses some of the better qualities of the brutalist
architecture of the sixties and seventies – dramatic
play of light and shadow, a clear formal diagram and
close attention to the ways in which the movement
of occupants enlivens space. It is a very mature work
for a practice that has not worked previously in
this scale and deserves to be taken up as model and
benchmark facility for other educational institutions.
Dr Sandra Kaji-O’Grady is associate professor
and Head of Architecture at the University
of Technology, Sydney.
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CREATIVE LEARNING CENTRE, BRISBANE GIRLS GRAMMAR SCHOOL
Architect
m3architecture.
Project and
construction
manager
Bovis Lend Lease.
Acoustic engineer
Ron Rumble.
Civil, electrical,
hydraulic, structural
and mechanical
engineer and lift
consultant
Connell Mott
MacDonald.
Fire engineer
Bassett.
Traffic engineer
Eppell Olsen
and Partners.
Landscape architect
Gamble McKinnon
Green.
Building certifier
Certis.
Access consultant
Rod Warmington.
Kitchen consultant
Food Service Design
Australia.
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