Ultimo Public School - Hayball
learning°
Ultimo Public School is located in Ultimo, Sydney. The design competition for a new campus was commissioned by the NSW Department of Education in 2016. The scheme submitted by Hayball Architects in collaboration with 360 was a shortlisted finalist.
Size: 5,400m2
Budget: N/A
Scope: Design Competition
The main entry is playful and activated
1. Community entry (above left)
2. Concept plan perspective (below left)
3. Wattle Street and rooftop landscapes (right)
Quarry Street entry
School street and slides
Elevated play space and rope play
The seamless integration of indoor and outdoor learning. And a playful, everyday experience of the site’s history.
Landscape masterplan
Elevated playground
Quarry terraces and integrated rope play
Quarry Street elevation
Jones Street elevation
South elevation
Design Statement
The design supports the architectural scheme and the pedagological ambition of the school to seamlessly integrate indoor and outdoor learning in support of the principal of biophilia. A series of connected green spaces offers a diversity of natural environments and opportunities for both free, unstructured play, as well as outdoor learning areas to support programmed classes. The distinctly green and connected campus fosters the development of smarter, more social, happier and healthier children.
The design references the site’s colonial history as a quarry and is infused with elements, details, materials and planting that reflect the site’s aboriginal past, as well as its global future as a benchmark of progressive, multi-cultural learning.
The guiding element and identity of the design are the 'quarry terraces’ that connect all levels of the school. Sandstone quarry blocks are used to define the terraces which are abstracted and manipulated to provide various opportunities for structured and unstructured play, outdoor learning, assembly areas, and social gathering. The terraces are colonised with plantings which are specified to fully support the learning programme - and will include species that illustrate the wide and various uses of plants including for medicine, food, material, ceremony, air and water purification.
In support of the campus concept of learning through biophilia, the planting scheme is a continuous green space ‘park to park’, implemented throughout the campus, at multiple levels, to the terraces, rooftops, frontages and boundaries.
