VISION 51 — LINES OF SIGHT
What about air and light flow?
Feedback on the indoor environment quality is positive,
with the air-to-air heat exchange systems providing
much higher levels of fresh air, eliminating the problems
with chemical smells. The extensive daylight penetration
deep into the building almost eliminates the need for
artificial light, but at the same time areas such as physics
can be totally blacked out for light experiments.
What were some of the established buildings on
which you based your design?
The school couldn’t find a comparable exemplar project.
The mix of spaces, need for flexibility and visible learning
has resulted in a transparent building. Being able to
easily reconfigure laboratories and other learning spaces
is also a huge benefit.
How does the Italian mathematician Fibonacci’s
work from the middle ages provide inspiration?
The brief objective to use the building as a teaching tool
resulted in deliberate choices of materials, colours,
patterns and spatial sequences to embed different
concepts within the building fabric. The Fibonacci series
appears in carpets, ceilings, lighting, the blue lounge at
the top of the stairs, and even in the commissioned
artwork. The Mandelbrot set is revealed as sliding door
panels stack, while the unique Foucault pendulum in the
atrium was designed and built as a research project by
the school community.
“Key elevations reveal
and shape views to
optimise circumstance
while the interiors
encourage a relaxed
informality.”
HARIKLIA PONTIKINAS, ARCHITECT