Architecture & Interiors

Sited on Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung Country, this Stage 3 Victoria School Building Authority (VSBA) project at Auburn High School (AHS) is a culturally attuned senior hub, providing a vivid, inspired range of learning and social environments.

Conceptually grounded in its dramatic landscape, First Nations heritage and industrial history, this building supports the pedagogical goals of staff within, while aspiring to educate in its own quiet way.

Sitting on the northwest corner of a former brick quarry and replacing a dilapidated building, its two-storey form steps down into the steep slope, each floor oriented along natural levels to create a distinctly zoned experience. All excavated rocks now feature in the garden, amid native grasses and Golden Wattle trees.

Its considerate linear profile meets the street with a colonnade of ochre masonry columns, establishing civic weight under a sharp, recognisably Australian, skillion roof. A curved mass signals the arrival, featuring bricks arranged in a tonal gradient, emulating striations in the adjacent cliff face.

The resourcefully designed new AHS building is visibly made from and for its place, suggesting an empathetic way forward for contemporary Australian educational facilities.