Springfield Central State High School – Secondary Campus

On the land of the Jagera, Yuggera and Ugarapul peoples, Springfield, Queensland

The Springfield Central Secondary Campus, commissioned by the Department of Education as part of the New Schools Program in 2021, proposes an interconnected vertical campus surrounding an oval, with a sports hall and performing arts building to the north.

The design has evolved from principles established in the Masterplan phase: the principal of a ‘vertical school’, predominantly north/south oriented buildings, and single loaded buildings.  These principles enable an arrangement that reconciles the brief with the site area, ensuring an appropriate amount of green space, and enabling passive thermal regulation and cross ventilation of the buildings.

Perhaps most importantly, the Masterplan brings together disparate functions on a complex site in a coherent way, resulting in a legible organisational structure and clarity for users.   It establishes, as a departure point, the notion of buildings as simple, robust, flexible utilities, arranged in a way that celebrates the spaces in between.

This conceptual construct is both a necessity and an opportunity; a repetitive grid that facilitates a range of functions within a structural frame, with efficient and repetitive systems of servicing and cladding, equally able to facilitate the current brief and ongoing adaption over time in a cost-effective way.

Whilst the buildings themselves are places for structured learning, the spaces ‘in-between’, often overlooked, become places for social learning and socialisation.  They are the spaces that build community.  This has resulted in a network of buildings brought together to form a ‘Green’ and a ‘Nexus’.

The Nexus, as the name suggests, is the central focal point and the seminal space of the project.  The most significant infrastructure of the school revolves around this place.  Ubiquitous balconies from adjacent wings enter the Nexus and, together with the stairs, form a 3D network.  This is both a practical necessity and a way to excite vertical movement through six storeys, creating a stimulating, dynamic, and memorable moment in school life.

What the Nexus offers the southern buildings, the Green offers the whole.  It links and connects significant functions of the school.  Importantly, it is a morning tea and lunch destination capable of gathering up the whole school.  The Green puts landscape and open space at the heart of school life, creating an important architectural moment – a release from the density and activity in its surrounds.  Together with the Nexus, it is imagined to be the key space where the social life of the school plays out.