2022 LEA South Australia Chapter Awards
04 Dec 2022
On Wednesday night the 23rd of November 2022, the LESA Chapter celebrated their Chapter Awards for Excellence in Educational Facility Design program. Congratulations to all the winners and commended project(s). After another tough year it was great to see the level of support for this year’s Awards and we thank all our entrants for sharing your projects with us.
The aim of the Awards is to celebrate exceptional learning environments where innovative architecture meets advanced educational philosophy and supports transformational change in learning and teaching practice. Although a smaller field of entries this year it was fantastic to see projects entered into all of the eight categories.
The overall Program Award winner this year was Ngutu College Building 1 – by Matthews Architects in collaboration with Ngutu College.
In their citation, the jury advised that “Of all the entries, Ngutu College Building reflects a clearly–focused response to adapting an existing non-educational building to its new use. This was accomplished on a very limited budget and time frame. Most importantly, the pedagogical approach locates the needs of the students first. Rather than grounding the design in best practice and conventional space standards, this learning environment was grounded in an educational model developed by the learning community”.
The jury were particularly impressed by the strength of the vision for the school, the engagement with its community, and the manner in which these have carried through into the adaption of the existing building. In recognising Ngutu College Building 1 as the Overall Winner, the jury noted this project most comprehensively demonstrated the principles inherent in the award criteria.
Congratulations to Matthews Architects and Ngutu College.
Category Award winners and Commendations were:
Category 1: An Innovative Educational Initiative
No awards given
Category 2: New Construction / Entire New Educational Facility
No awards given
Category 3: New Construction / New Individual Facility (or Facilities) Over $8M
Commendation – Murray Bridge High School Redevelopment by Cox Architecture for the Department for Education
Category 4: New Construction / New Individual Facility (or Facilities) Under $8M
Commendation – St Andrew’s School – The Collaboratory by Swanbury Penglase Architects
Category 5: Renovation / Modernisation Large
No awards given
Category 6: Renovation / Modernisation Small
Category Winner – Ngutu College Building 1– Matthews Architects in collaboration with Ngutu College
Category 7: Small projects under $2 Million AU
Category Winner – Parafield Gardens High School Special Options Building by the Department for Education
Category 8: Outdoor Learning Area
Commendation– St Francis de Sales College by Brown Falconer and DesignWELL
A full list of all jury citations can be found here: Citations
To view all entrants, including photos and project descriptions, please refer to the gallery here: https://learningenvironments.awardsplatform.com/gallery/AGwLzXER
