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Kangaroo Point School

Part 1 Project 2004
Aaron Peters
Andreea Ioana Pirvan
Queensland University of Technology Brisbane | Australia
Secondary campuses in Australia typically occupy the periphery of the city, consuming large tracts of land, servicing an increasing expanse of urban sprawl.

The Kangaroo Point School incorporates a typical secondary school program within a highly urban context, consolidating land use.

The facility also functions as a night school for vocational training.

The site is situated high above the Brisbane River, atop a broad, rocky cliff face in the heart of Brisbane City.

The building’s robust fabric and castle-like defence allows it to exist within its dense urban context, both offering safety to its occupants, and establishing an aesthetic suitable to the density of the city.

Aaron Peters
Andreea Ioana Pirvan


Despite the prominence of its river, the city offers surprisingly few significant public rooms (indoor or outdoor) with a river view, prioritising endless towers of private rooms accessible to few citizens.

The school fulfils its civic obligation by making a significant contribution to the city, yielding a grand public room overlooking the river. This room functions as a town square, common, and landscape folly.

The qualities of the public room borrow heavily from themes of landscape and terrain.
Whilst the room is outdoors, its enclosure is calibrated to enable all-weather occupation and is heavily defended from the western sun by an enormous masonry wall, its fabric reminiscent of the cliff face.

In section, an established topography of an open air plateau recreates the moment experienced at the edge of the adjoining cliff.




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2004
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