South Melbourne Primary School wins top architecture award

The South Melbourne Primary School designed by Architects Hayball has been named winner of the LEA’s 12th Annual Excellence in Educational Facilities Awards standing out due to its successful integration of educational pedagogies, community infrastructure and architectural design.

The architects challenged the Department of Education’s facility design standards to deliver a vertical school that sits within a public plaza and incorporates community facilities as well as an early learning centre.

The three levels of learning neighbourhoods are exemplars of responsive, flexible settings for contemporary teaching with outdoor learning spaces all threaded together by generous circulation. The outcome is a rich and rewarding spatial experience for the whole South Melbourne community

These neighbourhoods are threaded together with generous vertical circulation spaces that are activated and utilised as part of the learning environment. Care is also taken to integrate outdoor learning areas and vertical play spaces that connect directly into the learning neighbourhoods.

Integration with the community was identified as an underpinning foundation of the project in order to allow for the ‘Staff and City working together to ensure the village raises a child’. The community rooms, kitchen, café and sports courts are all designed for joint use between the school and the community.

The outcome is a rich and rewarding spatial experience for the whole South Melbourne community.