Penleigh & Essendon Grammar School
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PENLEIGH AND ESSENDON GRAMMAR
SCHOOL - JUNIOR BOYS BUILDING
Principal Architects: Rob McBride, Debbie-Lyn Ryan
Project team: Benedikt Josef, Amelia Borg, Natasha Maben.
Brick Manufacturer: Euroa, Austral, Boral, Krause
Construction Contractor: Contract Control
Brief + Design:
Penleigh and Essendon Junior Boys School began in an Italianate mansion on windy hill, opposite the Essendon Footy Club. This building is exceptional in a residential area where Federation housing dominates. This new project, a two storey year 5 & 6 block with 3 classrooms above and below, is an important addition to the school and public interface to Nicholson Street.
We wanted this building to acknowledge its unusual urban condition. This building needed to be a unique acknowledgment of an important threshold stage in the boy's school life. All wanted more than just good accommodation, we wanted a building of the imagination.
This proposal takes just the silhouette of a Federation Home, enhanced by black glazed bricks; it is up-scaled, extruded and sliced. The front of the building might be described perhaps as a haunted house, the centre (the extrusion) is vaguely a Shinto Shrine, while the striped Essendon brickwork of the rear (which interfaces with the schools ovals) reinforces the building's location and forms the robust grandstand
