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Newtown High School of Performing Arts

Newtown High School of Performing Arts

The Robin Amm Building at the Newtown High School of Performing Arts is a music and drama rehearsal building, built adjacent to the school’s Studio Theatre.

The building was designed in close consultation with staff and students and partly funded by efforts of parents. This allowed the architects to include some non-standard features that gives the building its distinctive character.

The brick facades to the South and East onto Whitehorse Street express the creative spirit of the school and some of the activities that occur within it. The facades are composed of three different face brick colours, the pattern of which represents traditional and contemporary musical notation.

The largest part of the building’s façade features a light grey brick to match the colour of the adjacent buildings. Small windows into the storerooms on the eastern façade represent notes on a stave. Red bricks are used on end to represent the pixels of sound waves on a computer screen. A dark brick is used for the base of the building as well as for the lines of the stave.

The wrapping of the brick pattern from the east to the southern façade, as well as the wrapping of the windows and signage, emphasize the three-dimensional quality of this cubic building. The western façade has small ‘note’ windows like on the southern and eastern facades however these are used to admit shafts of western light into the rehearsal spaces between the access ramps on that side of the building and are emphasized by large colourful internal reveals.

The architects believe the new building and its landscaping have transformed an unused piece of the school grounds into a proud and positive expression of the school community and marks a significant entry point into the school.

The Newtown High School of Performing Arts was highly commended in the 2009 Horbury Hunt Award's commercial category.

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