Galilee Catholic Learning Community, Stage 1

Design Patterns

Traditional Classroom: While there are four learning areas all opening onto the shared space, they are L-shaped, interconnected and all open directly onto external areas. Their bay windows emphasize that these are not traditional classrooms but safe havens for students who have access to a wide range of spaces. And there are no bells.

Welcoming Entry: The entry to the site was of prime importance in emphasising the links between school and community. Car parking and road access had to be from the west rather than north due to local authority restrictions, and the covered way links car park, school and future community use including church and social services such as relationships education and playgroup in a welcoming and non-threatening way.

Student Display Space: As well as a generous allowance for shelving and pinboards, a number of special display walls and small windows in external walls allow display of students work including three-dimensional pieces. Sunlight caught by the small eastern windows displays objects in different ways through the day, and the shared space allows student constructions to remain as works in progress rather than being disassembled at every change of activity.

Home Base and Individual Storage: Each child has a home area with a small open locker in that area for lunches and books. Bags are stored on open racks outside. As an elementary school, individual workstations are not considered necessary.

Science Labs, Art Labs, and Life Skills Areas: A key element of the curriculum is the environmental literacy program. This integrates science, art and the environment through activities such as construction shelters out of hay bales and found branches. Another key appointment has been a transitional teacher who helps children adapt from previous patterns of education and behaviour to the ebb and flow of the school life at Galilee.

Art, Music, Performance: Art is central to the design: it happens both inside and out: in the learning spaces, in the shared space and particularly on the wide verandahs opening from the shared space. The parent and child group created a triptych before the school even opened which now has pride of place in the shared space, and more art projects are planned. A prominent South Australian blues musician has joined the staff to create a focus for the music program, and performance is catered for in multiple indoor and outdoor spaces.

Physical Fitness: As Stage One of a small elementary school there is no specific indoor area set aside for physical activity but the variety of spaces in stage one allow for hard and soft play and a variety of healthy ways to interact with the environment. The main objective for the childrens fitness is to promote natural play, climbing, lifting, running within the natural surroundings. Something all children can participate in.

Casual Eating Areas: Eating healthy meals during school hours is just one more part of a school day which can be taken as a learning experience. Lunch and recess is eaten as a class, in the classrooms or large central gathering space and healthy eating habits are heartily encouraged through the joy of shared cooking, eating and lunch time chatter. The kitchen is located centrally within the building as one part of the central gathering space which references the family home; encouraging learned healthy eating practices to be followed through to home environments.

Transparency: The photos show how all spaces in the school are interconnected, with glass at the entry, glass between the shared space and learning areas, and large windows plus the bay windows to connect indoors and outdoors. In addition the display walls between the shared space and learning areas have different levels of transparency from mirrors through to clear and coloured and patterned glass. Small windows at different heights at the entry also celebrate the diversity of eyelines of students of different ages.

Interior and Exterior Vistas: Situated on a wide open existing barley crop with fantastic views of a nearby hill range; creating large open beautiful vistas of the surroundings was an easy task. The difficulty was more in reducing and fine tuning the views to highlight, engage and encourage reflection and discovery. This has been achieved through a range of differing window sizes and shapes (both internal and external), framing certain windows with bands of colour and warm timber and encouraging reflection through seating placement. The smaller windows, some 200 x 200mm in size, all set at different heights encourage peep hole viewing, encouraging children to view and focus on small sections of the environment. This could be the ground to focus on sprouting seedlings or the movement of insects, the sky to focus on weather patterns and colours or the nearby indoor learning space to watch the activity of feet moving around the room to help understand social activity.

Dispersed Technology: Flexibility of space and activity was another strong design focus for the learning community. With technology being such a large part of student activity and learning, its flexibility of use was incredibly important. A large number of laptops all with wireless internet connections allow the children to move freely throughout the internal and external spaces making each and every space technology rich.

Indoor-Outdoor Connection: The schools landscaping is made up of a range of spaces, set up to reflect the surrounding environment. This includes a sand dune mound to reflect and teach about the nearby beach and beach landscape and almond orchard to reflect the motions of surrounding agriculture practices. Each internal space overlooks and opens out to these external spaces, enlarging each classroom space and enhancing the flexibility of the school and its spaces and opportunities of learning about the local environment.

Furniture: Soft Seating: Classrooms are set up more like open plan living areas than your average classroom. Table and chair arrangements are more like dining tables with only one or two in each room. Children are encouraged to make their own learning environment with cushions, ottomans and stools or laying on the carpet, sitting on the stage. Children are allowed to find their own comfortable setting to maximise ownership of space and enhance learning capabilities.

Flexible Spaces: Flexibility of space was key to the layout of the building and surrounding spaces. Discarding set areas for computer rooms, libraries and gyms and instead using laptops with wirelesss internet connections, mobile resources and encouraging natural play allowed for the introduction of a large central shared gathering space. Combined with the four interconnected L shaped classrooms and a range of external environments, the building comprises a multitude of spaces for an abundant range of activities. Children are free, and encouraged, to roam in and between these spaces, internally and externally to make full use of all learning opportunities.

Campfire Space: The shared space acts as the campfire space for the school: generous in size and flexible in usage, it has multiple uses as a gathering space, activity area for projects such as children's block constructions which may take many days to complete. On a smaller scale, the bay windows in each learning space naturally act as a stage or focal point for group learning and activity.

Watering Hole Space: Chatting, sharing ideas, exploring, discovering and creating within the social environment of the learning community is heartily encouraged in the design and makeup of the school. Although it has also been described as the "open plan living room" the central shared gathering space can also be seen as the watering hole. It is a place where the whole learning community can gather as a whole or as smaller groups to play, explore, create, cook, eat and chat. Banter is an incredibly important part of the schools learning process.

Cave Space: The idea of creating a range of spaces; cosy caves, open light filled watering holes was a huge part of the design process and is referenced throughout the building. Overall we can say the building is a cave, a welcoming cosy sheltered place compared to its wide open windy surroundings. We can say the central gathering space is the watering hole and each surrounding class is a cosy cave. But really each space is made up each of these spaces, created through differing ceiling heights, raised floors, differing window sizes and heights and the L shaped classroom which quickly allow easy division within the spaces. The most apparent cave-like spaces are the bay window/stage areas situated in the central gathering space and in each classroom. Each coloured in a soft relaxing blue or green and situated to highlight views of the hills to the south or entry to the west, they provide wonderful little spaces to read, to relax, to sit and chat, reflect on surroundings and share stories.

Designing for Multiple Intelligences: Multiple intelligences are catered for at a number of levels, including considerations of acoustics, natural lighting, use of varied colours, floor textures, display walls, bay windows and external landscape materials. Spaces for different forms of external landscape including lawn and hard play, the natural sculpted landscape of the sand dune areas and the almond orchard reflecting its locality, and the scented gardens already established. The school have employed an environmental literacy teacher to broaden the students understanding of the local environment and have brought in hay bales for students to construct their own dwellings. The inter- and intra-personal intelligences are recognised through the formal and informal curriculum and the strong emphasis on links with the community.

Daylight and Solar Energy: Much of the form of the building is focused on bringing in natural light to create welcoming, visually appealing and comfortable surroundings, so important for optimum learning. Clerestorey windows, large floor to ceiling windows and sliding doors and a range of feature windows have helped to create this wonderful warm light-filled and home-like environment.

Natural Ventilation: While completely natural ventilation was an initial objective it was quickly found that the strength of the winds on site and the small temperature and CO2 level band required to achieve an optimum learning environment meant a mechanical system was required to deal with air flow and temperature. With optimum learning environments being at the forefront of design objectives, a dynamic group of community members, ESD consultants, service engineers and architects worked in collaboration from the inception of the project to achieve this through the most economical and environmentally sustainable means. A reverse cycle air conditioning system was installed with an economy cycle and heat reclaim to achieve the most comfortable and energy efficient environment. A building management system controls and measures internal services with a web-based interface allowing students to monitor energy, and in the future water consumption, and relate their actions to local and world wide environmental issues.

Full Spectrum Lighting: A range of windows- of different heights, sizes, facing different ways, shaded differently, the addition of coloured internal glazing and a number of coloured walls to reflect natural light differently into the rooms create a warm multi layered light filled environment. Less institutional, far more home like.

Sustainable Elements and Building as 3-D Text: With optimum learning environments being at the forefront of design objectives, a dynamic group of community members, ESD consultants, service engineers and architects worked in collaboration from the inception of the project to achieve this through the most economical and environmentally sustainable means. All environmental sustainable measures included in the project have two functions, to reduce the negative impacts the site and its users have on the environment and secondly to be used as learning tools, as part of the curriculum and through learning by example, which in turn has the ability to affect the whole local community. Examples of environmentally sustainable design practices and systems used on site include rainwater catchment for flushing toilets and watering gardens, retention of all site stormwater for future irrigation of sporting fields within site retention pond, an abundance of natural lighting and reverse cycle airconditioning with economy cycle and heat reclaim. A building management system controls and measures services with a web-based interface allowing students to monitor energy, and in the future water consumption, and relate their actions to local and world wide environmental issues.

Local Signature: Much thought has been given to the relationship of the school building to the local environment. The landscape master plan recognises the unique greenfields site situated between the sea and the hills, and the wonderful views of the hills are captured by the bay windows in the learning areas. The seaside location is reflected in the white colours of the building, and the planting around the school includes the sand dune area and the almond orchard which reflects the historical plantings of the area. Planting has used seed stock of local provenance, reflecting the unique nature of the nearby Aldinga Scrub, the last remaining coastal scrub area in the metropolitan area. All stormwater retention is on site, which means the swale and detention pond are prominent elements in the landscape design.

Connected to the Community: There has been constant reiteration from the briefing community that the school is not to be thought of as a disconnected building, it is a learning environment inextricably linked to its surrounding environment. Initial talks touched on the idea of not needing a school building and instead using a range of spaces throughout the townscape allowing children to become a real part of the everyday social environment. While fantastic in theory the practicalities of having a home base was too great. The decision therefore was to bring the community into the site. The school is therefore just one part of a larger encompassing site community focused on life long learning in a faith based environment. The site is to include in the coming years a church and multipurpose spaces, community health and counselling facilities, opportunity shops, a preschool, community sports fields, fitness/walking tracks and community reflection and play gardens. Connections with the community is already strong, with a clear focus on bringing the parents in to be part of the childrens learning, linking the school with the local preschool and church (which currently uses the main gathering space for weekend Mass while the church is being designed and built) and links with such groups and institutions as Flinders University and the nearby Eco Village.

Bringing It All Together: From the start the school has been thought of in a modular fashion: small groups with common starting ideas but moulded to suit the needs of different ages and learning from the experience of each stage. The concept of four learning spaces with a general common space, rather than specialist spaces such a resource centre and computer laboratories, has allowed exploration of the pattern method within the strict area guidelines enforced by funding limits of 66 square feet per student.

Small Learning Community: Although the school is situated in a semi rural environment and only has the enrolment capabilities at present for a small number of children the nearby towns are expanding rapidly and will soon engulf the site and fill the school with a large number of children. The long term view is to hold on to the feel of this rural school throughout its life, keeping the learning communities small and dispersing them throughout the site. This aims to encourage ownership of space and enhance the feeling that each separate learning community is a place of rest, a welcoming home to meet and gather with friends every day.