The latest addition to the Epping Secondary College Campus is a bespoke Senior Building for the Year 12 cohort. The project vision centred on providing purpose-built series of spaces to support the school’s final year students to learn, study and relax among their peers, that will prepare and support their transition to more autonomous tertiary education settings.

The building provides places for interaction of various scales designed to be supremely flexible, allowing multiple usages. Acoustically treated and technologically connected spaces allow half the building to become one space, capable of holding events of up to 200 people achieved by the introduction of fully operable walls and glazing.

Spaces have been developed that cater to student wellbeing needs, including a meditation/quiet space and areas for physical activities such as yoga. This ultimate flexibility in design offers a wide variety of uses to the students and the wider school community. A generous deck adds additional usable external space that can be opened up and combined with the internal spaces to create a large open-air function space.

The architecture throughout is transparent and permeable, with skylights and abundant highlighted lighting features bringing openness and clarity as well as reflecting contemporary design through materiality and finishes that strengthen relationships between the existing structure and the campus beyond.

Nestling comfortably into the surrounding landscape, the new building complements the existing campus and provides a meaningful, purposeful and pragmatic addition to the school.