The completion of Sunshine Coast Grammar School’s new Primary Precinct represents a significant milestone for the school as it continues to expand its capacity.
Deicke Richards has a long history of working with the school, having completed a new master plan to complement the school’s strategic direction. The overall intention of the master plan is to improve the campus by providing facilities that meet the current and future needs for teaching and learning while maintaining the character of the school within the natural environment. Sitting on an expansive bushland site, connection to nature is very important and a key consideration for our design responses.
The Primary Precinct was a key component of the initial masterplan. It incorporates two three-storey buildings shaped by the curve of the primary school oval. Classrooms are arranged in a single-loaded configuration off veranda-like corridors, a deliberate echo of the Queensland school tradition, with breakout pods opposite classrooms, shared between each pair of rooms. This favoured configuration was carried through from the original single-storey buildings on the site, an element that was drawn out from an early stakeholder consultation process. At the heart of each building, a generous double-height flexible outdoor learning area opens fully through louvres to the sky, functioning as a covered outdoor space for art, cooking, and making. A bridging undercover walkway with a central covered play area ties the two buildings together, offering shelter for the whole primary school community on rainy days.
The new primary school buildings are contemporary and comfortable, with natural ventilation and an outlook to the surrounding forest and green space. The first building incorporates 12 general learning areas, a reception space, an outdoor learning area, breakout nook spaces across the building, and staff offices, and has an outlook to surrounding forest and green space. The second building incorporates 14 general learning areas, an outdoor learning area, and breakout nook spaces throughout. Both buildings were fully documented simultaneously, allowing a coordinated and efficient delivery across the two stages.
Inside, the interior palette draws from the rainforest that cloaks the perimeter of the school grounds. Each level interprets the experience of looking into the green curtain from a different height: the ground floor reads as understory — shaded, grounded, intimate. The middle level becomes the canopy, and the top floor the emergent layer, open and light-filled. It is a concept that grounds the building in its place without being literal and gives students a richer sense of where they are.
The site held several constraints which required a considered response. Significant bushland and vegetation set hard limits on the building footprint, nudging the structures slightly further into the oval than originally anticipated. Flood risk shaped every ground floor decision, creating accessibility challenges that were worked through carefully across the design and documentation stages. Because the new buildings occupy the same ground as the old ones, staging was an important consideration, requiring a sequenced decant and delivery that kept the school functioning throughout construction.
The new buildings have been received very well by the school and its broader community.
- Client
Sunshine Coast Grammar School
- Location
Sunshine Coast
- Year
2025
- Photography
Joe Ruckli
