ARM has delivered a brand-new vertical campus for this inner-city primary school.
North Melbourne Primary School is located on the land of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation.
It’s a new campus to cater for the rapidly growing North Melbourne Primary School population.
ARM and landscape architects Bush Projects masterplanned the tight, triangular site to make the most of the available space.
Many North Melbourne children live in apartments, so they rely on their school grounds for outdoor exercise and play.
The building is sited and arranged to optimise the size and quality of the outdoor spaces: to make the best possible use of sunlight and to make spaces where children are intrinsically excited to be.
Traditional Owners
↑The design specifically acknowledges the site’s Traditional Owners, the Wurundjeri people.
To determine how to do this appropriately and in a way that primary-school children would understand and value, we worked closely with Aboriginal consultants including N’arweet Dr Carolyn Briggs AM, a senior Boonwurrung Elder and Founder of the Boonwurrung Foundation.
Carolyn shared with us her knowledge of Country, language and culture as a way of deepening our understanding and connection with each other and the land for present and future generations.
Carolyn also worked with us on the OurPlace project for RMIT.
The community hub includes a state-of-the-art basketball court.
Community Hub
↑North Melbourne Primary’s community hub includes a competition-grade indoor netball and basketball court, a music space, change rooms, storage and toilets. The hub is designed so that community groups could potentially use its facilities outside school hours, by agreement with the school.
As one of Melbourne’s first vertical primary school campuses, North Melbourne’s design aims to set a benchmark for future vertical schools, which will become more plentiful as inner-city populations grow and change.
Construction has begun and the campus will open in 2023.