Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School Senior by McBride Charles Ryan

Arched openings bring students past shimmering tiled buildings and into landscaped courtyards at this grammar school near Melbourne by Australian architects McBride Charles Ryan (slideshow).

Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School Senior by McBride Charles Ryan
Photograph by Peter Bennetts

Completed at the end of 2012, Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School (PEGS) Senior is the second building designed by McBride Charles Ryan for the school, following a boys junior school shaped like the silhouette of three overlapping houses.

Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School Senior by McBride Charles Ryan
Photograph by Peter Bennetts

For PEGS Senior, the architects devised a figure-of-eight plan with a sequence of classrooms around the edges, a library at the centre and two courtyards within the voids. This layout allows every route to lead back to the library and also creates outdoor spaces that are protected from strong winds.

Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School Senior by McBride Charles Ryan

“The project is based on an infinity symbol, a shape that allows the facility to be structured around two protected courtyards,” explain the architects. “The building is an embodiment of the journey of education and the crossover between disciplines.”

Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School Senior by McBride Charles Ryan

Swathes of colour streak across the walls, floors and ceilings of rooms in both wings as part of a colour strategy to help students to differentiate between each department.

Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School Senior by McBride Charles Ryan
Photograph by Peter Bennetts

Glazed ceramic tiles in bands of grey and black give the school its shimmering outer skin, while the same shades are repeated across the cladding panels of the courtyard elevations. Some details are picked out in timber, including the underside of arches and louvred window screens.

Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School Senior by McBride Charles Ryan

The two separate courtyards contain a mixture of grassy mounds, hard landscaping, rock gardens, trees and curvy benches.

Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School Senior by McBride Charles Ryan
Photograph by Peter Bennetts

“This variety of spaces and volumes [is] not dissimilar to a walled citadel with its gardens and ceremonial arches,” add the architects.

Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School Senior by McBride Charles Ryan

McBride Charles Ryan completed its first building for PEGS in 2011. Other projects by the firm include Klein Bottle House, a residence with origami-like facets and folds.

Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School Senior by McBride Charles Ryan

See more schools on Dezeen, including a stark concrete secondary school in Portugal and a gabled extension to a boarding school in England.

Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School Senior by McBride Charles Ryan

Photography is by John Gollings, apart from where otherwise indicated.

Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School Senior by McBride Charles Ryan

Here’s some more information from McBride Charles Ryan:


The Infinity Centre, Keilor East

The Infinity Centre, the new campus for Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School senior students, is derived from the initial idea that the library, a learning hub, is central to the school. We also wanted a building that offered protection from a windswept site and signified the merging of two schools.

Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School Senior by McBride Charles Ryan

Radiating out from the library, along the length of the form, are specialist precincts and a variety of learning spaces. Each wing then returns to link up, forming cloisters and the resulting plan of an infinity symbol. Being structured around two protected courtyards has enhanced the learning space’s access to light, ventilation and view.

Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School Senior by McBride Charles Ryan

Each wing has its own qualities, different from each other and yet seamlessly connected to the next. In this way the building acts as an embodiment of the journey of education, with less distinction of any prescribed boundaries between disciplines. The colour strategy reinforces the identity of the academic disciplines, universally enhanced by the richness of natural materials, such as locally recycled timber. Planning allows the building’s circulation to constantly return to the library at its heart, and in this way is physically and experientially in parallel with the educational ethos of the school.

Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School Senior by McBride Charles Ryan

This variety of spaces and volumes, not dissimilar to a walled citadel with its gardens and ceremonial arches, are encased within a unifying skin. The outer wall of the building is clad with glazed bricks, a material that offers protection, beauty, gravitas, and imbues the impressive form with a sense of permanence. The banded brickwork pattern aids in reading the shape of the building, adding complexity and delight as the sun catches the silver through the day.

Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School Senior by McBride Charles Ryan
Photograph by Peter Bennetts

Project team: Rob McBride, Debbie Ryan, Andrew Hayne, Drew Williamson, Qianyi Lim, Peter Ryan, Stephan Bekhor, Anthony Parker, Amelia Borg, Natasha Maben, Benedikt Josef, Alan Ting, Luke Waldron, Jacqui Robbins, Daniel Griffin, Seung Hyuk Choi, Angela Woda
Area: 8000 m2

Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School Senior by McBride Charles Ryan
Photograph by Peter Bennetts

The post Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School
Senior by McBride Charles Ryan
appeared first on Dezeen.

Penleigh and Essendon Junior Boys School by McBride Charles Ryan

Penleigh and Essendon Junior Boys School by McBride Charles Ryan

This shimmering silhouette in the shape of three overlapping houses is in fact a junior school for boys in a Melbourne suburb.

Penleigh and Essendon Junior Boys School by McBride Charles Ryan

The two-storey school building is faced in glossy black tiles and was designed by Australian architects McBride Charles Ryan.

Penleigh and Essendon Junior Boys School by McBride Charles Ryan

Inside the extruded silhouette the school provides six classrooms, breakout spaces, a meeting room and a staff room.

Penleigh and Essendon Junior Boys School by McBride Charles Ryan

Classrooms on the first floor have curved ceilings that wrap into the pitched roofs above, while walls in ground floor classrooms have rounded edges.

Penleigh and Essendon Junior Boys School by McBride Charles Ryan

A long timber bench lines the corridor that links ground floor rooms.

Penleigh and Essendon Junior Boys School by McBride Charles Ryan

Similar buildings from the Dezeen archive include a hotel that looks like a pile of houses and a furniture showroom that looks like stacked barns.

Penleigh and Essendon Junior Boys School by McBride Charles Ryan

Photography is by John Gollings.

Penleigh and Essendon Junior Boys School by McBride Charles Ryan

Here are some more details from the architects:


Penleigh and Essendon Grammar
School – Junior Boys Building

Brief + Design:
Penleigh and Essendon Junior Boys School began in an Italianate mansion on windy hill, opposite the Essendon Footy Club. This building is exceptional in a residential area where Federation housing dominates.

Penleigh and Essendon Junior Boys School by McBride Charles Ryan

Slowly the school has accumulated much of the property in the block bounded by Nicholson, Raleigh, Napier & Fletcher Streets. Many of the ‘houses’ are now occupied by the school. This new project, a two storey year 5 & 6 block with 3 classrooms above and below, is an important addition to the school and public interface to Nicholson Street.

Penleigh and Essendon Junior Boys School by McBride Charles Ryan

We wanted this building to acknowledge and exploit its unusual urban condition. All wanted this building to be a unique acknowledgment of an important threshold stage in the boy’s school life. All wanted more than just good accommodation, and we wanted a building of the imagination.

Penleigh and Essendon Junior Boys School by McBride Charles Ryan

Click above for larger image

This proposal takes just the silhouette of a Federation Home, it is up-scaled, extruded and sliced. The front of the building might be described perhaps as a haunted house, the centre (the extrusion) is vaguely a Shinto Shrine, the rear (which interfaces with the schools ovals), if you squint – The Big Top.

Penleigh and Essendon Junior Boys School by McBride Charles Ryan

Click above for larger image

The planning is arranged so as to provide northern courtyards to the ground floor classrooms, upstairs the corridor is switched to reduce overlooking to the adjacent neighbour. The ground floor Grade 5 classrooms have rich deep colours and an earthy ambience. The first floor is ethereal. With more than a nod to Utzons Bagsvaerd Church the complex silhouette is smoothed to a cloudlike shape. The extruded chimney a source of light and a means of naturally ventilating the classroom space.

Penleigh and Essendon Junior Boys School by McBride Charles Ryan

Click above for larger image

Principal Architects: Rob McBride, Debbie-Lyn Ryan
Project team: Benedikt Josef, Amelia Borg, Natasha Maben.


See also:

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Evelyn Grace Academy
by Zaha Hadid
Leimondo Nursery School by
Archivision Hirotani Studio
Sandal Magna School
by Sarah Wigglesworth