Galilee Catholic Learning Community, Stage 1

Narratives

Architectural

Project description

Stage One of the Learning Community accommodates 85 students aged from five to eleven years on a flat, treeless former barley paddock on the western outskirts of a beach side town in South Australia. It provides a welcoming, faith-centred environment for life-long learning.

Conceptual framework

The main objectives were to:
* develop and strengthen communities, from the greater town and Catholic communities, right down to the smaller learning space communities and each of their own internal communities.
* provide an optimum environment for learning, with spaces for free-flowing flexible learning .
* create a home, a place of rest and discovery for all users of the spaces.

Public and cultural benefits

From inception, the school was considered to be simply one part of the overall Catholic Community - a place for all, to learn, meet and chat, for creating and reinforcing links between different sectors of the community.

Relationship of the built form to context

The built form relates to its context in three major ways:
Its siting quite close to the main road helps frame a major entry into the town.
The introduction of the covered way, which in future stages will wind throughout the site linking each built element.
Its high roof form and many varied windows which highlight and frame the nearby hill range, the most prominent element in the visual context.

Program resolution

The Shared Learning Space sits centrally within Stage One. The large open, light-filled space can be compared to an open plan living room in the home, a place of meeting and activity from which all other spaces connect. To the north is a sheltered verandah. To the east and south are four smaller learning spaces, each opening out to various external spaces including the almond orchard to the south and hard play and sand dune to the north. The covered way connects to the building from the west and leads into an internal entry zone with toilets to the south.

Integration of allied disciplines / sustainability

A dynamic group of community members, ESD consultants, service engineers and architects worked collaboratively to achieve an optimum learning environment through the most economical and environmentally sustainable means while acting as learning tools for the students.
Reverse cycle air conditioning and abundant natural light provide optimum comfort levels for learning. A building management system with a web-based interface controls and measures services, allowing students to monitor energy and water consumption and relating their actions to local and worldwide environmental issues. Recycled timber is used for the flooring of the shared space.

Cost/value outcome

The school has met the stringent cost and area targets for government funding through the use of simple economical and durable materials. Small amounts of higher cost materials have been used only with high ESD and/or optimum learning outcomes in mind.

Response to client and user needs

Since its opening the staff has commented on the way the spaces promote calm, encourage discovery and provide space for the children to explore their environment.

Educational Narrative

Developing an educational brief for a new learning community was an exciting challenge for the Education and Building Group. For each member, the notion of creating a new place for learning was a nerve-wracking exercise. How do you determine spaces for learning that provide opportunities into the future and cater simultaneously for learning and wellbeing?

Common principles helped guide consideration of the possibilities and the development of the brief. The overall vision was clear: to create an integrated community of faith, learning, family and friendships. The dream was for this community to be a place of service and life long learning to all families. It was also clear that the learning component would need to fit as a part of the total vision.

Defining the learner gave the group a foundation for its initial deliberations. The group moved forward with two overarching understandings; that learners are competent, active, social and critical beings constantly producing change through dynamic movement with the environment, systems and with each other and that a learners competencies and motivation can be enhanced or inhibited by the setting.

The strong relationship between space and pedagogy became the focus of debates amongst the members of the Education and Building Group. And although some argued that a good teacher can use any space for good teaching and learning, all members of the group felt cautious in underestimating the power of space as a teacher itself.

Members were influenced by understandings from Reggio Emilia where the environment is unequivocally seen as a third teacher and physical space is a language of its own with a strong conditioning factor communicating culture and values.

Trying to determine an existing theory or pedagogy to base this new learning community became problematic. Rather, a grounded approach was taken based on an understanding that there is a reciprocal relationship between the physical and psychological environments. Flexibility in the design of the physical space would help teachers and learners explore more fully pedagogy that gives greater life to the notion of holistic education and would encourage the evolution of theories.

Breaking open the notion of holistic learning led to an exploration of the challenges inherent in the use of one defined space as the learning classroom. The built environments would need to support a vision for learning that encourages connectedness, making meaning and truly exploring different ways of learning. Underpinning the vision were beliefs about building social and emotional well being and capacity, learning how to learn, sustainability and the provision of spiritually rich environments within an integrated Arts and Science focus.
Providing for learning inside and outside, in gardens and orchards, at the beach and in the scrub, and in small and large spaces would require an innovative approach as well as ubiquitous technology. Every aspect of this building would need to be a metaphor for the broader vision of community within community to meet the needs of young people today and into the future.