News Archive

Master of Architecture students participating in Semester 1’s Timber in Architecture elective have recently completed the design and build of a new outdoor structure at Carey Baptist College Primary School in Perth's southern suburbs.

Unit Coordinator, David Bylund, and ALVA students met with staff and children at the school to look at whether they could design and build a centrepiece for their communal, permaculture garden. The primary school felt that their garden needed a focal point that could provide some much needed shade, and hoped that the structure could be built using sustainable development principles.

For the first half of the semester, students worked on a number of proposals in a competitive design process overseen by a design review committee.  The winning proposal, considered 'a highly imaginative and elegant solution' belonged to Dustin Diep and Sing Liang Chai. It used inverted, interconnected pyramids to represent a spreading canopy of three trees. (They cited as precedents Kengo Kuma and Associates’s Wooden Bridge Museum and GC Prostho Museum projects.)

As the use of a large truck had been donated, students then built the structure in segments in the Faculty workshop over the next few weeks. Eventually these pre-fabricated segments were transported to site and installed - all in a day's work.

Wespine Industries and Bunnings Harrisdale sponsored the elective through the supply of materials, whilst consulting structural engineer Bill Smalley attended several of the design sessions and provided valuable engineering feedback to the students, free of charge.

Carey Baptist College Primary School teacher and Garden Committee member David Haddy wrote 'The new structure looks amazing.  Thank you for your initiative and efforts with bringing this to the school, community and the garden.  The children will surely be able to have a lot of use from its placement and design purpose..'

As well as providing an invaluable experience for Architecture students to design, build and install a real-life, permanent structure, the project has opened the door to future collaboration with the primary school regarding a similar shade structure in one of their inner courtyards.

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Laura Radovan | Communications Officer | +61 8 6488 1859