Living Faith Lutheran Primary School – Year 6 Learning Plaza
Project Details
Architects
Bickerton Masters Architecture
Address
50 Brays Road, Murrumba Downs Qld 4503
Cost
$389,000
Project Overview
The Living Faith Learning Plaza was created by refurbishing an existing space to create GLAs for the Year 6 cohort of approximately 85 children. The design departs from traditional GLA arrangements and provides a variety of spaces that support highly flexible and collaborative learning.
Living Faith Lutheran Primary School’s vision for the Learning Plaza was to create a space that reflected new, flexible and collaborative ways of learning and departed from traditional classroom designs. It represents a move away from compliance towards engagement, where individual potential is pursued. The School wanted a new space for their three classes of Year 6 students to foster development of contemporary competencies: creativity, collaboration, adaptability, critical thinking, global awareness and emotional intelligence. This developed into one large space for the cohort, broken down into smaller spaces using operable walls. The Stadium is a spacious area where students congregate for group instruction. Community Booths and Genius Bars provide spaces for smaller groups to work collaboratively. The Fish Bowl and Build-Your-Own (BYO) areas lend themselves to individual work. Community Booths feature pop-up TVs, which connect wirelessly to students’ iPads. The Fish Bowl, originally designed as a staff area, organically developed into a shared space for students and staff. Teachers use unique mobile-offices to meet administrative needs.
The need to refurbish an existing space to create the Learning Plaza was one of the key challenges for the project. It was important to consider design elements that would address the potential for acoustic disruption, which was one of Living Faith’s main concerns with a completely open space. This was addressed through the careful selection of ceiling and floor materials – acoustic plasterboard ceiling panels were chosen along with a higher density carpet tile. The carpet tiles also provided the opportunity to experiment with colour and bright green was chosen for part of the Plaza to further define a particular space.
The Learning Plaza, together with the teaching pedagogy, has interested educators globally. Professional development tours are held regularly for educators from across Australia. Tertiary educators from the US have visited and the School has received interest from Canada and the UK. Other schools have modelled their own building development on elements of the Learning Plaza and Living Faith is thrilled to be at the forefront of an educational revolution.
