New classrooms – Springfield Convent School
2022 – 2024
Project Team:
Contractor: Edge-to-Edge 1275 cc
Heritage Consultant: Claire Abrahamse
Landscape Architect: TKLA
QS: Watermarque Consulting
Structural & Civil Engineer: Meny-Gibert and Associates
Electrical Engineer: IME Consulting Engineers cc
Fire Engineer: ConsultLab SA cc
Acoustic Engineer: SRL SA
Health & Safety: Safetycon cc
Photographer: David Malan
Project Description:
The project forms part of long-term framework thinking, and is the last in a series of insertions into the historic school campus fabric.
As with previous projects, the intention is to embed the new into the existing landscape, to enhance
a significant reading of built and landscaped elements.
CCNIA worked with Landscape Architects (TK-LA), with one hand not knowing where the other begins, resulting in strong, considered connections between inside and outside place.
The context in this instance is the historic main school entrance and tree-lined Avenue which leads to the heart of the campus – Convent House.
The brief called for additional classrooms within a lower courtyard framed by double storey buildings.
The opportunity was to shift from a pattern of inward-looking, disconnected courtyards and buildings to an activated, connected series of internal and external learning spaces.
A green thread is drawn up from the previously unseen garden below, winding around existing and new, becoming a sloped garden to the upper Avenue, enfolding new classrooms tucked beneath.
The lighter architectural language of the new Prayer Room at the level of the Avenue allows a more recessive reading than the classroom buildings, befitting its different use. This angled room and garden introduces a generous collective threshold to the entrance of the school.
New ramps and walkways enfold the new into the existing. As they meet the existing buildings, these links penetrate, activating connections and views to the northern garden beyond where there was none before. These, together with a learning pavilion and hard landscaping to the garden edge, encourages a fluid engagement between the upper built Avenue and the lower natural garden.
The tectonics of the new takes its cue from the rhythm and beat of existing pilasters, openings and decorative mouldings in a quiet recessive manner, while the new endemic landscaping is exuberant.