Location: Menangle Park, NSW

This project forms the third and penultimate stage of construction of a new Campus heart at an existing school in Sydney’s south-western suburbs.

The building brief called for a range of uses with a focus on dramatic and musical performance as well as school assemblies, school chapel services and as an examination venue.

It is a large structure accommodating up to 1000 persons, with a commensurate internal volume designed to deliver high acoustic quality for musical performance.

The building addresses the central courtyard of the school with a low scaled, linear Lobby/Exhibition space that connects and extends a senior students cafeteria designed by the practice previously.

The building gently rises in height away from the courtyard, to maintain solar access to the central public space. A high level of environmental performance has been achieved through a variety of means, including deployment of a mixed mode HVAC system that is augmented by a large scaled “shower-tower” cooling system at the rear of the hall that indces water-cooled air through the main auditorium volume for all but the occasional extended heat wave conditions that intermittently pervade Sydney’s south-western region.