Pittwater House School by Neeson Murcutt Neille

In Sydney’s Northern Beaches, a strategic design intervention demonstrates the benefits and efficiencies of building with less – a reduced carbon footprint, lower project costs and increased school pride.

The twentieth century saw new developments, of varying quality, filling land and replacing older buildings in Australia’s cities to meet the demands of a growing population. While the pressure to accommodate growth continues, today’s environmental crisis requires a different approach that must work with these built legacies as the starting point. Retention or minimal build is foregrounded when considering the whole-life-cycle carbon footprint of buildings, including the embodied emissions of materials from extraction and manufacturing processes, construction, operation, maintenance and end-of-life.

However, a lot of the built environment is functionally, environmentally and sometimes aesthetically underperforming. Likewise, there can be entrenched perceptions – good and bad – of buildings that can shape outlooks and briefs. Today’s conditions require design skill to assess existing buildings and land use, to harness potential and address inadequacies, real or imagined, through an economy of means.

Pittwater House, in Sydney’s Northern Beaches, is a private school offering education from pre-kindergarten to year 12 with same-sex classrooms on a coeducational campus. However, the school faced a discrepancy between the progressive education model and its physical campus. Facilities had not kept pace with the rapidly expanding student numbers and there were problems with DDA access. The red-brick buildings had also become a significant image issue for the school. The campus had developed haphazardly as suburban blocks in the surrounding neighbourhood became available. Buildings were repurposed – including a motel – and land occupied with “temporary” structures to meet immediate facility shortages.

Neeson Murcutt Neille was an apt choice to rationalise and reimagine the campus. The practice doesn’t demolish unless absolutely necessary and has proven skilled at devising elegant and efficient solutions to existing conditions that improve functionality and add delight, as exemplified in the designs of the Australian Museum Project Discover (in collaboration with Cox Architecture) and the Juanita Nielsen Community Centre Upgrade.

The team looked at the site and its operations as a whole, and interrogated the concerns and perceptions of the client, resolving to “bind Pittwater House into a cohesive campus, driven by open space.” They developed a simple site diagram, using an analogy of a hand, that made sense of the campus and provided a vision for the school community. The three schools – pre-kindergarten, junior and senior – form the hand’s fingers, with vital stretches of landscape between. Their masterplan proposed a new shared-facility building in the palm of the hand at the campus entrance. The scheme then leaves open the possibility of reclaiming more open space with the removal of smaller buildings currently sitting amid the landscape spines.

For the client, funds were limited, optics mattered and visual change was vital for attracting enrolments. Neeson Murcutt Neille’s solution for the first stage synthesised an expedient use of resources – money, material, time – for long-term impact. The key move was to add a pale blue and green verandah, a “piece of critical infrastructure,” to the much-maligned red-brick buildings that housed the senior school, delivering necessary amenity and a facelift. A new vehicle drop-off and pick-up zone that becomes a space to play during the school day was also completed in 2023.

The project intelligently focused interventions where needed. Neeson Murcutt Neille concluded that the classrooms in the three-storey brick blocks, which had large windows and high ceilings, were satisfactory. The issue was circulation, which was confined to narrow, locker-lined corridors disconnected from the outdoors, and required navigation of the different datums of the blocks. Changes to the existing buildings were minimal. A stair block linking two of the buildings was removed, allowing a passage from the drop-off area to the central play area, and the exposed walls infilled with glazed pale blue and green brick. The corridors and classrooms were retained. So, too, was the previously loathed red-brick facade, which is now punctuated with glass doors opening onto the new covered verandah.

The design of the new verandah is likewise restrained to what is necessary. It expresses permanence and lightness, and uses a colour palette that reflects the school’s Northern Beaches identity. The semi-enclosed, generous verandah wraps two lengths of the building and navigates the level change with stairs and a lift. To the north, its zigzag form further encourages congregation. It extends the structural logic of the existing with exposed concrete slabs and columns – rectilinear when attached to the brick peers and round on the outer side. Large pale green and blue perforated metal panels are bolted together to create a high balustrade. The design has limited component parts that will require minimal maintenance, creating a pleasing and restrained space that is beautiful when occupied and not.

The project demonstrates how to do more with less and the impact for the school is palpable. During a visit at lunchtime, the campus buzzed with activity and the open spaces swarmed with students. The verandah provided shade, and students sat in pairs or groups along its edges. From the car park, the new blue and green screens, framed by a jacaranda tree, stand out against the red and yellow bricks of older buildings. It is a beacon and provides an animated passage to the reception and principal’s office.

Moving from within the classrooms onto the new verandah gave a visceral feeling of release. The verandah and the revamping of an adjacent amphitheatre offer informal spaces for learning and socialising. School principal Nancy Hillier noted students’ disposition towards being outside – especially post-COVID – and the value of a variety of teaching environments that they now have.

Practice directors Rachel Neeson and Stephen Neille speak of circulation being the DNA of architecture and the city. At Pittwater House, the verandah makes circulating an experience and celebrates the choreography of the school day. It is an orientating guide and creates an active edge to the sports field, knitting the campus together and adding to its vitality. It acts as both a stage and viewing platform. The perforated screens, which zigzag in plan to the north and rise to the slab soffit around the stairs on the west elevation, embody the rhythm of students’ movement and energy.

The school’s presence within its neighbourhood has also improved. A generous staircase partially wraps the end of the red-brick building facing the street, complemented by “Pittwater House” lettering on a newly white-painted brick. Haphazard services on the rear facade have been removed and the new drop-off provides a welcoming street presence.

Hillier calls the project transformational, explaining that “a building no one was in love with suddenly provided us with the future – it enabled me to confidently bring people onto the campus and say, ‘this is the contemporary Pittwater House.’”

This project doesn’t attempt to solve all the issues of the campus at once. The masterplan establishes a frame-work for incremental development, unlocking the potential of the site for the school body to take forward as desired. When I raised the contrast between old and new with Neeson Murcutt Neille, they expressed confidence in the school team to make the cosmetic upgrades – stating the designers’ role was to make the big moves that set the direction. Every construction choice carries environmental implications, making the determination of necessity both a design challenge and an ethical responsibility shared by architects and society.

— Kate Goodwin is an architecture curator, critic and educator. She is an adjunct professor at the University of Sydney, member of the Tin Sheds Gallery advisory board and former head of architecture at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

Details

Project

Pittwater House School

Architect

Neeson Murcutt Architects

Sydney, NSW, Australia

Project Team

Rachel Neeson, Stephen Neille, Tamas Jones, Lilian Szumer, Kirsty Hetherington, Ben Dixon

Landscape architect

Jane Irwin Landscape Architecture

Sydney, NSW, Australia

Accessibility consultant

Funktion

Builder

Grindley Construction

Building surveyor

Steve Watson and Partners

Civil engineer

Stellen Consulting

Hydraulic, mechanical and electrical consultant

JHA Consulting Engineers

Project manager

Impact Group

Quantity surveyor

Genus Advisory

Structural engineer

Cantilever Consulting Engineers

Town planner

Mersonn

Wayfinding

Studio MAAT

Aboriginal Nation

Built on the land of the Cammeraygal people.

Status

Built

Category

Education

Type

Schools

 

Facing the street, the end of the red-brick building is partially wrapped by a generous staircase and perforated panels.

 

The circulation experience becomes the DNA of the school's architecture, connecting students and staff to landscapes and natural light.

 

With minimal intervention, the addition of the pale blue and green verandah delivered necessary amenity and circulation, and provided a facelift.

 

Existing red-brick facades were retained and punctuated with glass doors that open onto the new covered verandah.