The Centre for Science & Art, Abbotsleigh Senior School & Library & Innovation Centre, Abbotsleigh Junior School

The Centre for Science & Art, Abbotsleigh Senior School

A dual-discipline building forms a pivotal addition to this master-planned Sydney campus, underscoring the school's emphasis on STEAM.

In form and function, the Centre for Science & Art treads lightly on its site, woven between remnant blue gum forest and two heritage houses bookending the campus.

It’s two organically shaped wings – one for science, one for art – are joined centrally by a curved glass-enclosed walkway. In the spirit of scientific inquiry, the science wing expresses its material construction with interiors left raw and services exposed, while the art wing’s workshops and studios are dappled with soft natural light from windows and skylights to the south.

Multi-use assembly spaces, staff and meeting rooms and informal breakout areas are distributed through both wings, with unprogrammed public spaces adjoining the glass bridge at either end, fostering dialogue between art and science exhibitions and happenings.

Library & Innovation Centre, Abbotsleigh Junior School

Designed to delight and inspire young minds, with rippling circular forms to show that learning is not linear. Creating the 1,140 m² centre involved modifying an existing 1950s building and inserting a new glass ovoid building that beautifully punctuates the more conventional campus buildings, and affords staff a 360-degree view of the children at all times.

The library and new external staircase link previously disconnected areas, forming a cohesive central hub of the campus with indoor/outdoor learning spaces around the ovoid glass building.

Interiors of the tech-enabled library use organic circular forms drawn from nature with a maze of curved bookcases, an immersion for wide-screen viewing, glow-worm ‘caves’ for quiet reading and spiral-patterned ceilings referencing ripples in a pond.

Uniting the old and new buildings is an undulating canopy of glass-reinforced concrete that signals the library entrance and shelters an outdoor play area.