Honor Awards
Peel Education and TAFE Campus, Mandurah, Australia
Spowers Architects and Jones Coulter Young Architects
This project, built on the site of an existing Tertiary and Further Education (TAFE) campus, is unique for its master plan that combines senior school students, TAFE, and university students on a single campus. The facility allows adult education and vocational training to occur within one facility, therefore helping to boost student retention rates and promote the concept of lifelong learning.
A lengthy planning process brought together three, traditionally separate education providers-the education department, TAFE, and the university-to plan a flexible, coherent, and united campus. Six student-centered principles were established before beginning the design process, which included workshops, value management sessions, and a series of public consultation meetings. An environmental engineer helped with a series of passive environmental strategies that moderate climate, acoustics, natural lighting, and ventilation.
A “learning street” consolidates display, exhibition, gathering, and learning spaces within one large covered but unenclosed area, offering high visibility and easy access to learning and specialist facilities. Group discussion rooms are scattered throughout the campus in an effort to limit the “ownership” of individual curriculum areas. A “ubiquitous technology” approach to general, flexible, and group learning areas is designed to address short and long-term needs as well as the future sharing of facilities, which is likely to occur as a result of the evolving relationship between the different educational providers.
The facility’s layout and design, with its internal community focus and egalitarian access for all, is key to enhancing comfort, safety, and respect for others. An indigenous center within the TAFE facilities promotes cross-cultural interaction. The grounds include tracts of natural vegetation as part of an Indigenous Natural Heritage Zone within the horticultural studies area. Connection to the outside community also is part of the campus’s master plan. Zones are set aside for development by businesses who want to partner with the school and create ties to the vocational study and workshop facilities.
P. Iglesias Educational and Cultural Center, Alcobendas, Spain
BN Asociados
In the words of this project’s designers: “education and culture cannot be kept inside a shell, as something for the privileged ones. Nowadays they are a sign of freedom and progress, which can and must be communicated by architecture.” This line of thinking illustrates the idea that education is not an undefined concept but rather the result of community development.
Located in a lower middle-class district, the project works as an educational institution and a civic center. Not only does the facility offer cultural activities for both students and the community, it compensates for the shortcomings of an urban plan and is situated in an area where no provisions for educational structures where made.
The facility originally was planned to symbolize the “pulsating heart of the new generations,” fully equipped with the latest communication technology. It evolved into an efficient contemporary building, suitable for the requirements of a heterogeneous public, as well as a work of architecture integrated into its context within the local architectural tradition. The large, glass, north-facing façade is a powerful, symbolic force and a striking contemporary landmark. Visible behind it, the main spine of the building serves as a student center and social space, as well as a path to the rest of the building that streamlines control and security.
Since the building serves a variety of education, training, and cultural requirements, public authorities received some private donations, including the building’s electronic equipment, which was donated by mass media and telecommunication companies. Use of the building for musical and theater events contributes to the building’s maintenance funds.
Halls Head Middle School, Mandurah, Australia
Spowers Architects
Designed as a community precinct, Halls Head Middle School combines educational spaces with a community recreation center, sports fields, library, and tiered lecture theatre; transition zones at each end of the school indicate public areas.
Four learning communities, each with two learning teams, have been designed so that location, form, and texture increase the idea of an identifiable ‘home’ for middle school students moving up from the primary school system. Spaces were designed for maximum flexibility, an idea that allows for a range of configurations and the creation of ‘classroom labs.’ Students use the labs-which have compressed air, gas, water, and other features-to increase self-directed learning opportunities. Group resource rooms, project rooms, and ‘ubiquitous technology’ also allow for flexibility.
The design process commenced with workshops on the nature of middle schooling and with meetings attended by the community and educators. During a series of public workshops and meetings, the architects presented concepts ranging from very preliminary ‘opportunity and constraints’ diagrams to detailed planning and three-dimensional computer ‘fly-throughs.’
A Local Area Planning initiative by the Education Department was provided to give the local community a certain level of autonomy in their decision making.