Wurun Senior Campus is a new, highly sustainable vertical building accommodating senior students from Collingwood College and Fitzroy High School. It provides a flexible, welcoming, tertiary level environment that fosters agency, choice and interdisciplinary learning. The building form reimagines the multi-level commercial vernacular, stepping up to create a series of landscaped outdoor terraces. Each level connects directly to the interior learning environment to leverage the diverse pedagogy, community connectivity and wellbeing benefits of natural light, greenery, views, and recreation spaces.

As the first initiative of the Fitzroy Gasworks urban regeneration precinct, the school was designed to integrate with the adjoining sports centre, now in construction; incorporate First Peoples-led history, culture and storytelling; maximise access to outdoor areas on a tight urban site; be highly sustainable and connect with the surrounding community, creative, business and entrepreneurial hubs.

The design response focused on creating a tertiary oriented experience aligned to a self-directed and project-based approach. Each level is designed to accommodate a focused learning precinct which features a range of learning environments. Multi-purpose atria spaces at the campus heart provide flexible gathering options across the six levels.

For connectivity between the precincts, a colour coded ‘street’ winds up through the building, with stairways linking the multi-level voids to provide visual connectivity and enable intuitive wayfinding.

Wurundjeri people were consulted and commissioned to inform and develop artworks, murals, interpretive work, the campus logo and provide input into indigenous planting.

Furniture: BFX Furniture. Lighting: Vision Lighting. Finishes: MaxiPly, Autex Acoustics, Woven Image, Interface, Forbo, Urban Stone, Haro Sports Flooring, Tiger Turf. Fittings & Fixtures: Caroma, Britex, RBA Group, Chadoak, Lotus Doors, Kyissa, Michael Schiavello, Inhabit, Melbourne Facades, Tiger Corp, TopKnot Carpentry, Bach Commercial, BestFab Steel, Schindler.

Photography: Trevor Mein, Matthew Seebeck