The Sisters of Charity, founders of MSM, are described as women of action, who refused to remain in a closed order and took to the streets as much out of protest as to help others.
The College is built around an original homestead (Grantuly), acquired by the Sisters when the College was founded. The suburb’s streets, avenues and drives wend their way through landscapes around and up to the College perimeter, with evocative names such as Oleander Dr and Hibiscus Ave.
The Sisters’ cultural history and the suburb coalesce to form a new street, to stimulate a culture of public behaviours, and give shape to the Master Plan including internal equitable access and siting for proposed new work.
The new street surrounds Grantuly forming the ultimate parcel in the organic, concentric suburban pattern, defining the house and all that it stands for – foundation, establishment, domesticity, administration, a school in a suburb, a house in a school…
The street will be the lifeblood of the place for rituals, events, and demonstrations, planned and spontaneous. While it will look like a street and feel like a street (without cars), it will go further, so that students take to it, like their Sisters before – a misbehaving street – street names that make people think, yellow no standing lines that become whimsical, cats eyes that make people see very different messages, speed signs that do anything but limit, zebra crossings, light poles… to set the tone and get the school community to take to the street(s).
