Ormiston College is an Independent school in the heart of the Redlands, established in 1985 and set on a 67-acre parcel of bushland. Blueprint were invited, and won, a competition process to design a new Science Centre. This building was to incorporate 11 classroom spaces and be the first 2-storey classroom building - on what has traditionally been a single storey campus. The Science Centre building houses a series of 9 laboratories over two levels with central prep rooms, faculty offices and two General Learning Area Classrooms.

The building has an open ground level that provides year group seating and cross campus connections. Further landscaping and break out seating areas, gives more opportunities for gathering, play, and informal teaching. Vertical circulation nodes are placed within these cross-campus links and external verandahs, shield classrooms, all creating a building where the circulation spaces are open and passively designed, leaving only teaching areas fully enclosed and airconditioned.

Ormiston College Science Centre

Features &
Favourite Design Parti

Tiered seating within the classroom to allow vision like an auditorium to the science experiments and immerse students in a learning environment. Room layouts were designed where student learning benches could double as experiment desks allowing multiple students to gather equally on all sides, enabling an efficient, considered practical learning environment. Open foyer areas on the ground level of the science building encourage visual and though traffic connections from this building to the broader school environment providing and encouraging students’ exposure to the science curriculum. All laboratories have expansive areas of glazing to encouraging this visual connection.

Design Parti: The hexagon shape has all equal sides. A rectangle disadvantages two sides. Therefore, the hexagon shape was adopted in tables, spaces, seating areas and then repeated in ceiling grids or floor patterns to enforce the sense of equal teaching, sharing and gathering. It also reinforced cell like structures found within the realm of science. The hex visual was adopted in external elevational forms. The architecture strived to embody and visually promote teaching of science to the school community.