Nigel Peck Centre for Learning & Leadership
2008
John Wardle Architects



A prominent Melbourne secondary school occupies the site surrounded by important landscapes. Several historic trees along its main campus orientation preface the original bluestone Quadrangle building. Opposite its street frontage are the Domain and Royal Botanic Gardens. The brief for the building is to create a new campus entry, the school’s library facilities and supporting lecture theatre and seminar room spaces to forge a new campus heart focused on learning.



The design is for a series of inter-linked pavilions. Each link is glazed encouraging visibility through to the campus interior. The main entry frames a view of the bluestone Quadrangle building weaving the old and new together visually. Each pavilion has its own individual expression to the public on Domain Road.



The main active body of the library comprises a series of giant oversized steel framed windows of varying shapes with overlaid fritting to glass within. From the interior, the various windows frame differing views to the greenery of the historic gardens beyond.



The book stack pavilion stores the main book collection and is clad in a burnished healer brick with its own bond specifically designed for this component of the project. The bond includes several vertical bricks stacked on end and the main wall folds back to highlight these book-like bricks set into the surface.

The design goes to great lengths to capture the multitude of landscape and contextual views available and so becomes an outward focused learning environment orienting its students toward the city, its history and beyond.



Nigel Peck Centre for Learning & Leadership images / text from John Wardle Architects 080808



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