St Thomas Aquinas Centre Wins at 2022 Queensland Architecture Awards

Our St Thomas Aquinas Centre at Aquinas College received an award for educational architecture at the 2022 Queensland Architecture Awards.

The Centre provides an assured urban presence, renewed circulation and opportunities for collaboration at the Gold Coast’s oldest co-education school.

The Jury’s citation reads: ‘​Designed with the overt principle of engagement initiatives in mind, the project is conceived to be climatically and socially reactive to the locale. The planning responds to both the notions of pedagogy and place, and endeavours to engage with a carefully considered flow from interior to exterior spaces. The centre reflects on its significance by adopting the predominate use of local face brickwork in clean contemporary lines, to produce a harmonious balance with the existing built elements.’

Former principal Peter Hurley: ‘Deicke Richards empowered us to see the unseen – a school that could be pre-tertiary instead of post-primary, and look towards what learning can be rather than what it has been. A place where students and teachers alike can work and learn in spaces that are contemporary, collaborative spaces with light and flexibility. The St Thomas Aquinas Centre is just the start of a new path, a new cultural direction that will allow the school to come together, grow and excel into the next 50 years.’

The project first received a commendation at the 2022 Gold Coast & Northern Rivers Architecture Awards. Congratulations to the whole team for their work on this transformative education project.