Projects

Founded in 1980, Newhaven College is an independent, co-educational school from Foundation to year 12 and is the only secondary school located on Phillip Island. Hayball was tasked with providing an updated masterplan for the school, bringing the entire campus of 1100 students together at their new Phillip Road Campus—a significant milestone for the school.

Responding to an original brief that specified two separate facilities, Hayball approached the project as a single building existing across two sites. Exhibiting a similar form architecturally, the new facilities are designed as one building, separated by the existing campus road, yet integrated through a distinctive design response whilst being complementary to the campus setting

The two buildings comprise a senior learning centre for years 10 to 12 alongside a specialist facility for Science, Arts, Technology and Media. A state-of-the-art facility housing specialised settings that facilitate design, electronics, robotics, coding, digital fabrication and multimedia, alongside science and art spaces. Both buildings provide purposeful learning environments which support the broad-based pedagogy of the school, incorporating informal spaces for smaller groupings, and allowing for more collaborative study-based work.

The design offers a more mature interior setting, appropriate to the senior student cohort. Taking inspiration from contemporary co-working spaces, we developed a restrained palette which extended throughout the spaces from joinery, to wall and floor treatments and soft furnishings.

Strong winds are a unique feature of the site, so the buildings are shaped and placed to create protected outdoor spaces and covered external connections.  A west-facing steel shade screen sets the character for both buildings, helping to strengthen the identity of the project within its setting and to visually tie the two structures together, whilst providing a protected pedestrian thoroughfare connecting both facilities

The resulting design provides a unique assembly of contemporary learning environments, centred around a landscaped campus heart.  The new buildings create an iconic setting that celebrates education and social interaction, a facility whose fabric responds to its beautiful setting and the distant views over Phillip Island.