ST BEDE’S COLLEGE PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE

The brief for this project was to create a versatile indoor/outdoor space that would provide for everything from the most intimate of individual music lessons, to tutorials, ensemble work, recording, multi-media activities, and large scale school productions.

Client

St Bede’s College

Completed

2011

Project Type

Education/ Performing Arts

Traditional Owners

Bunurong people

Learning through performance

St Bede’s College has developed their music and drama courses around students’ total involvement in the creation of the various productions, from ideas to presentation. In response to this, the focus of this design is as much on the ancillary facilities as it is on the main auditorium where performances are received by parents, teachers and fellow students. Communications are further enhanced by the careful placement of windows to enable clear sight lines from space to space.

Technical requirements

This is a complex building type, and it’s construction involved a painstaking co-ordination of theatre technologies and services within the building structure. The resulting building provides sound insulated practice rooms, computer laboratories, and an auditorium, all connected by wiring and technical patch panels to enable communications between the various performance spaces.

Site challenges

On a practical level, the major challenges were a limited budget and an awkward site. Constrained on four sides, the project required a sensitive approach to space-making. Built on a residential street, with a vocal residential lobby group, it required a sympathetic balance of acoustic, aesthetic and practical considerations.