The Mentone Grammar Creativity Centre brings the Performing and Visual Arts faculties together with Food and Materials Technology in one facility. The project contains a 450-seat theatre with fly tower, orchestra pit and back of stage facilities, band rooms, recording room and black box space. The Visual Arts component includes a variety of arts studios opening onto internal gallery spaces and external courtyards. Materials Technology is linked to both the Visual as well as the Performing Arts, whilst Food Technology provides sustenance to the creative population through the café. A central atrium interspersed with a series of voids and multi-level spaces provide visual connections between the various disciplines and unites the creative community occupying the building. The learning lounges and gallery in the atrium give students a chance to mingle, learn and be inspired by others.
The Creativity Centre’s formal and spatial expressions suggest geological phenomena – the external form is a collision of tectonic plates, the central atrium a canyon cleft by a crystalline skylight above, the theatre a multifaceted lapis geode – as though sculpted by the creative energy generated by the various faculties and disciplines within. These gestures give the school a prominent street address and identity, whilst forming interstitial outdoor learning courtyards and laneways that invite students and staff from other faculties to wander through the building, thereby encouraging the sharing of creative outcomes with the broader school community.
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