The new Heritage College Junior Learning Centre provide much needed learning spaces, staff spaces, and amenities to serve the school’s burgeoning student population. Both buildings were simultaneously documented, tendered, and constructed, and were completed in record time in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The buildings are similar in form but vary in material expression—one is clad in corrugated metal cladding and Modwood, the other in bands of glazed brick and standing seam cladding—adding texture and colour to the campus’ built environment.
Both buildings have a central, double-height group learning space that draws natural light deep into each building, but that’s where the similarities end: one building is designed to dovetail with the existing primary school, and so takes on the existing geometric design motif in the form of multicoloured hexagonal acoustic panels, tiles, and patterned carpet to create a seamless transition between existing and new. The other building stands alone and establishes a contrasting vocabulary, with sweeping curved bulkheads and coved ceilings in varying shades of grey, creating a muted, calming atmosphere. Suspended acoustic baffles and woodwool acoustic panels finished in a pearlescent metallic grey follow the curves in the ceilings, providing visual interest and acoustic attenuation to the classrooms and music room.
The two buildings are linked by an outdoor learning area sheltered by a lightweight steel canopy, its two outstretched ‘wings’ clad with translucent sheeting to allow filtered daylight into the learning area while sheltering students from inclement weather, creating a welcoming space that students will enjoy for years to come.
