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Brief
A flexible and adaptable hall over two levels that is big enough to host the entire school, up to 2400 people; within a small footprint. The Collegians Centre houses two basketball courts with room for spectator seating, function rooms, change rooms, storage, an audiovisual control room, and shaded seating around its perimeter.
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Design
We located the Centre between the school’s two sports ovals, an intuitive gathering space that links the junior, secondary and senior schools. The building follows the landscape’s topology, one side connects pedestrians directly to the ground plane of the ground floor, the other via the second floor. Setting the building within the land maximised the building’s thermal mass allowing us to employ passive sustainable design principles; reducing the need for cooling and maximising daylight. Natural ventilation has been supplemented with a light touch mechanical system, run by an integrated building management system that controls and monitors the building's mechanical and electrical equipment.
We chose humble, durable materials and hard wearing finishes to reduce the cost of construction and ongoing maintenance of the building. The external form and materiality references the simple red brick and traditional colonnades of the existing buildings on campus, letting it sit neatly at the heart of the whole.
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Impact
For the first time, Radford College has a place in which all students can gather together. The building has also already served the broader community as a world-class sports facility, having hosted a women’s national basketball league game between the University of Canberra Capitals and Adelaide Lightening.
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