Suters Architects

Sacred Heart Primary School Library

Sacred Heart Primary School Library
© Gollings Photography

SACRED HEART PRIMARY SCHOOL LIBRARY

Suters Architects

ARECHITECTS
Suters Architects

PHOTOGRAPHS
Gollings Photography

YEAR
2008

LOCATION
Melbourne, Australia

CATEGORY
School

Text description provided by architect.

The big idea behind the new Sacred Heart Primary School Library was to create an interior which referenced the religious culture of the school in a subtle way using a reinterpretation of the visual language of Catholicism.

Sacred Heart Primary School Library
© Gollings Photography
Sacred Heart Primary School Library
© Gollings Photography

It explicitly drives innovative design thinking by having the school’s identity manifest itself on the exterior and interior of the building, via imagery of the school’s name sake, The Sacred Heart. This provides a sense of place particular to the client group, the Parish of the Sacred Heart.

The project was an urban infill exercise with the site being an asphalt playground placed between two impressive nineteenth century buildings, the Sacred Heart Church and the adjacent School Hall.

Sacred Heart Primary School Library
© Gollings Photography
Sacred Heart Primary School Library
© Gollings Photography

Care was taken to respectfully balance the library between these autonomous presences while adding to the continuity of the site.

The literal expression of the bleeding heart of Jesus is represented in plan as a morph of a series of traditional heart shapes. Images of the Human Heart bisected by a Love Heart form the base geometry for the layout of the walls.

Sacred Heart Primary School Library
© Gollings Photography
Sacred Heart Primary School Library
© Gollings Photography

This starting point produces a distorted plan which does not address the polite ideas of scale or proportion but rather a fantastical urban condition.

The client required a multi-functional space that functioned as an I.T. classroom, Library, Reading Recovery and a Learning Centre.

Sacred Heart Primary School Library
© Gollings Photography
Sacred Heart Primary School Library
© Gollings Photography

The multi disciplinary space is large and column free, dissected with a high level clerestory roof formed from the overarching Crown of Thorns.

The clerestory encourages a reliance on natural lighting and natural ventilation, lifting the teaching space from utilitarian to one possessing ethereal qualities with a double volume reminiscent of the adjacent church and halls.

Sacred Heart Primary School Library
© Gollings Photography


Sacred Heart Primary School Library
Elevation
Sacred Heart Primary School Library
Elevation
Sacred Heart Primary School Library
Elevation
Sacred Heart Primary School Library
Elevation


Sacred Heart Primary School Library
Section
Sacred Heart Primary School Library
Section
Sacred Heart Primary School Library
Section
Sacred Heart Primary School Library
Section


Sacred Heart Primary School Library
Plan

Suters Architects
T +61 2 49265262
Suters Architects
16 Telford St, Newcastle NSW 2300, Australia