Barker College Rosewood Centre
Barker College is an Independent co-educational Anglican School in Hornsby, an outer Sydney suburb, on Dharug Country. It is an established campus on an expansive site. The new sports and learning facility is a significant asset that brings clarity and order to the eastern part of the campus, communicating civic mindedness, sustainability, Indigenous awareness, connection to landscape, and engagement with sport.
The project aims to bring to life the idea that ‘sport is a celebration for all’ creating a vibrant place that is playful in spirit whilst founded on clear layers of logic – circulation, structure, light. Organised in two parts, the building has a sports hall that can hold gatherings of up to 3000 on its northern side, and a linear learning ‘bar’ overlooking the sports field to the south. It provides 5 multi-use sports courts, 12 classrooms, multi-use learning spaces, staff areas, a function room, fitness facilities, and parking. The building has a clear circulation order and establishes datum levels that connect with the campus topography, facilitate connectivity, access equity and way-finding.
Indoor sports facilities are inherently voluminous large footprint buildings. The challenge for this type was to avoid the appearance of a giant shed and provide spaces and details at the human scale. From the exterior and animating what is a large building form, a pearlescent canopy awning follows the line of the topography – in recognition of Country(+) - along the full northern frontage. Gestural and welcoming, it filters light, provides rain protection and shade. The building minimises reliance on energy, offsetting the energy it consumes by a significant number of photovoltaics on the roof.
The sports hall ceiling and walls work together to dampen the space acoustically for teaching and assemblies, whilst maintaining the bright sound of spectators that is so elemental to competition sport. Visually the sports hall is neutral - a light haze - the activity of occupants and their uniforms, bringing vibrancy and colour. By contrast, the linear learning ‘bar’ is highly coloured. The class and staff area floors are a colour extension of the field itself, and its ceilings adopting tones of the Sydney Blue Gum, endemic to this Country.
This is a building about movement. Multiple natural light sources give a sense of liveliness even when the building is empty. The pattern of ceilings, the adjacency of walkways to sport courts, the awareness of sport on nearby fields, the shape of details and the signage design, all celebrate movement. Astute decision-making has a significant multiplying impact on the design of larger buildings. A rational approach to structure, sustainable services, material selection, and clever building sequencing contributed to the cost-effectiveness of the build.
(+)Country is a term used by First Nations to describe lands, water and sky to which they are connected.
