Sunshine Secondary College

The central courtyard, with its dedicated middle school hubs and associated outdoor spaces, will be the natural focus both of the campus and the landscaping design work. The courtyard presents as a set of loosely interrelated spaces moving around the moored buildings, and cohered through surface treatment, topographic treatment and program. Close consultation with the architectural program will be important to ensure fluid and logical connections and view lines into and out of this place.

Integration between the landscape and architectural programs is a key driver in our design process. The architectural proposal by Spowers is itself suggestive of an overall approach to the landscape. As diagrammed, the inter-relationships within the architectural program, with its loose alignment of buildings across the broader suburban field, brings to mind a form of relaxed coherence similar to boats, within a harbour, gently shifting and drifting upon their moorings.

In considering an approach to the landscape, such an organisational plan would facilitate:
• An adaptable fluidity to the gradual development of the wider project development.
• The relationship of the landscape with the architecture to maximise the benefit of individual buildings surrounded by open space.
• An iteration and re-interpretation of the classroom footprint as a way of introducing small cultivated areas within a tight landscape budget, e.g. areas of food cultivation, water collection, and/or a copse of trees.
• A loose arrangement of shapes which negotiate the configuration of the circular and rectangular sports fields.
• A ‘rope’ of ‘stepping stones’ linking campuses, and introducing a pathway into the West Campus from its lowest point at Wright Street.