St Ambrose Primary School

St Ambrose Primary School is a new school proposed in Pottsville, NSW. We recently completed the landscape design and documentation for stage 1 of the project which is set to welcome its first students in 2015.

The school is designed to allow for close interaction between indoor and outdoor areas.

The design of the landscape seeks to engage students with the immediate and broader context as much as possible. Various elements are introduced to the design as a way of referencing the northern rivers coastal landscape of which the school is part. One of the ways this was expressed in the design was with a ranges to beaches/ boots to bare feet sequence.

Measures will also be taken to engage students with ecological processes and the local community. One method used to achieve this is through the production of provenance stock that is to be made available to the local community by the school. Seeds from existing trees to be removed will be collected by the school and the nurturing of them from raw seed to growing stock will become a student project. This process will be strengthened by the fact that most existing trees on the site are retained to become important play, shelter, and character elements within the new school landscape.

The planting of trees in grids is used at several points in the design to contrast with the random nature of coastal tree growth while also providing a link to the straight line 'wall' of the Melaleuca and Casuarina forest that dominates the western edge of the site.

Grid plantings of trees are also one of the devices used in setting up a sequence of spaces as one moves through the school. The goal is to establish a contrasting flow of spaces that create filters (or forests) and clearings…with each strengthening the meaning and impact of the other. This also ensures that the central (landscape) courtyard of the school, wrapped as it is in architecture, becomes a critical part of the  clearing/ filter sequence.

Architects: Twohill and James Pty Ltd in association with Pat Twohill Designs Pty Ltd

Thanks to the folk at Twohill and James for the model images and the collage render

...more images to come.