Genazzano Madeleine Centre
Home >> Design In It » Think Brick Awards » Awards Entries 2011 » Horbury Hunt » Commercial » Genazzano Madeleine Centre
Project Genazzano FCJ College Madeleine Centre for the Performing Arts
Category Commercial
Architect H2o architects
Builder Watpac Construction Vic
Masonry Contractor Brickon Pty Ltd
Façade Brick Tile Contractor Baron Forge Contractors
Civil Paving Contractor Watpac Civil with Baron Forge Contractors
Brick Manufacturer: Austral, Euroa, Daniel Robertson, Reuse
Project Summary
The Madeleine Centre is a technically sophisticated Performing Arts Centre and Music School for Genazzano FCJ College in Kew. The Centre absorbs its character from the existing campus palette of brick, which has been selected for its material longevity since the construction of the 1889 William Wardell building.
The design consists of an ‘embedded’ elliptically planned auditorium encompassed by curved glazed galleries to the North/South and rectilinear ‘book ends’ to the East/West. The music school and colonnades to the North and East are articulated as ‘accretions’ of a light cream brick, inspired by the brick trims of the campus.
The PAC is integrated within its garden context by careful sculpting of the building envelope to avoid removing significant mature trees. The Centre recedes and grounds itself into the established garden using a glazed brick tile cladding that recalls the mottled greens of the trees. The landscape paving matches that used throughout the school campus. The elliptically planned Auditorium is enclosed by a curved rendered brick skin to provide thermal and acoustic mass. This skin was constructed using bricks recycled from a demolished 1970s nursing home structure pre-existing on the site, thereby continuing on a story of the college’s continuing evolution.
