BBC: Tell us a little bit about your background. BBC families will recall that you were on the Advisory Council, but your specialty is in education design, isn’t it?
GL: That’s right, yes. I thoroughly enjoyed my time on the Council, which provided a great insight into the daily life of the College and the rich history of BBC. My professional mainstay has been a focus on education design, a focus on working with communities and maximising learning opportunities for schoolchildren and tertiary students. It’s a passion, definitely, without question, and the entire Hayball team share this ethos. I love working in this space.
Every school is different; every university is different. It’s very much a long-term relationship approach. So, you’re becoming a member of the community through deep listening, collaboration, and co-creation. You’re there for the best interests of the school and the children and their learning, and that overrides everything.
BBC: What were the primary objectives and goals that drove your approach to the Master Plan Campus Vision?
GL: We had to try to really understand the unique attributes of BBC that can inform decisions. There’s a wonderful heritage, as an example, and over the years, buildings may have crowded that a little bit. Goldicott House was also purchased, which is a consideration in terms of the connectivity of the campus from Goldicott Hill to the creek. Topography and terrain are obviously significant at BBC as well, so there were some practical considerations like that at front of mind. Critically, we also wanted to address the need for contemporary learning spaces and to respond to the diverse needs of the boys, the staff, and the BBC community. The Master Plan Campus Vision envisages a cascade of buildings from Goldicott Hill to the creek. This enables the progressive delivery of new learning environments that are intrinsically connected to the existing College, oval, outdoor settings, and campus vistas, all whilst respectfully building away from neighbouring dwellings. The Master Plan Campus Vision also considers many nuances, such as emphasising the uniqueness of the Pipe Band, acknowledging the importance of boarding, ensuring the inclusion of food options, transforming event offerings, providing greater staff amenities, and building a new Chapel and Gallery.
To answer it in a line, a Master Plan must be holistically considered. It’s not just one thing. I really stress that a good Master Plan is an agile and flexible framework because things change. Learning changes, pedagogy changes, financial conditions change, construction prices change. So, we need to have an agile framework that will address all of those things and really expand the amazing foundations in terms of history and the existing stock and landscape amenity of the College. Importantly, I think the Master Plan Campus Vision strikes a sustainable balance of new and revitalised works of various scales.
BBC: How does the design incorporate BBC’s values and educational philosophy?
GL: Great question. We’ve had lots of discussions with the Advisory Council about the values and how the Master Plan Campus Vision needs to respond to every boy. Again, every boy is different; every school is different.
The Prototype project will be an absolutely fundamental part of this initial Master Plan Campus Vision implementation. So, moving forward, learnings and data can enrich the brief for new builds and further refurbishment projects in the years to come. Pedagogy never sits still. It’s never frozen. It will always be evolving and changing. Technologies will change, and different learning demands will come in for the boys, so the space needs to be agile and flexible and give different affordances. We feel the Prototype is a fundamental part of this Master Plan Campus Vision, initiation, and implementation. In part, it also makes great use of the residual value of the McKenzie building. We’re not constructing a new building to enable this Prototype. We’re actually testing and re-imagining existing classroom spaces, which will also help us to revitalise and transform other existing spaces in the College. It’s an incredibly important piece of work culturally, educationally, socially, environmentally, and fiscally, which has been co-created with the staff.
BBC: Tell us about the academic spaces you’ve been designing. You’ve already touched on the Prototype Classroom, obviously, but how do you see the Master Plan Campus Vision, overall, supporting teachers and students in the classroom?
GL: We need to think beyond classrooms. That’d be the first thing I’d say. There will be multiple learning modalities within what we prefer to call learning communities, internally and externally. It’s about the amalgamation of various spaces with more specialist spaces as well. So, we’re seeking to get a good dispersion of specialist spaces across the campus to enrich the different precincts. That’s very important. There will be some immediate needs addressed in these initial works, as I mentioned with the Prototype. But beyond that, as we add new assets, we can transform general and specialist offerings whilst unlocking other aspects of the campus. Students will be learning in more agile, adaptable, flexible, contemporary environments with fewer constraints. So, the Master Plan Campus Vision will progressively transform the experience for everyone using the College.
BBC: What about the new and refurbished facilities for sports and activities? What kind of new opportunities are they going to provide for the boys?
GL: We acknowledge there’s a tremendous sporting history at BBC. I think in terms of the sports and activities, it’s really embedded in the Master Plan Campus Vision how assets will engage with those wonderful open green spaces, events, and activities. I think the other key thing is we’re really seeking to create more open space for the boys. As the school grows, the boys need that space. So, what we’re trying to do is create a diversity of spaces of different scales that can be used for a multitude of things. So, it gives BBC a lot more flexibility. And I guess it comes back to the boys again, you know? Different boys will need different things. There will be retreat landscapes; there will be larger sporting ovals and activity spaces that will be enriched. Everybody’s different; their needs are different. So, there will be a diversity of choices there depending on what interests and activities the boys want to undertake.
BBC: Another big part of the Master Plan Campus Vision is promoting a connected and united campus and cutting through some of the complicated geography we currently have. Could you tell us more about that process?
GL: Yes, I think that’s really at the heart of the vision, to be honest, because you’re absolutely right. At the moment, there are considerable level changes from Goldicott Hill down to the creek and even traversing from Noblet to Miskin. In both of those orientations, we’re seeking to utilise new assets, landscapes, connections, and walkways to improve the legibility and simplicity of traversing the campus. Back towards the Administration Building, there are key junctions that need to be simplified and have greater legibility of connection, which will vastly transform the College. The strategic placement of new lifts to complement existing lifts is also key to providing an accessible and inclusive campus.
BBC: Honouring BBC’s heritage and preserving the Green, White, and Black character of the campus has been another important component. How has that challenge been approached?
GL: In terms of the terrace that we’ve completed already, you’ll see how the Green, White, and Black have been implemented there in the finishes and the furnishings and the roof coverings. It’s coming through. I think that there are great opportunities as refurbishments and new builds continue to maintain that consistency, further building on the history and culture of BBC.
I think the other thing is allowing the heritage to breathe. I can’t emphasise that enough. For instance, some of those spaces towards the rear of the terrace of the administration building had been built in over the years. We’re seeking to open those back out and reinstate the original shaded areas to bring back that long-standing history to the fore. But the Master Plan Campus Vision also goes beyond physical change. It’s about experiences and further embracing the BBC way.
BBC: As a school, we’re quite lucky to have some really diverse natural spaces, including the creek and some bushland. We’ve recently incorporated some of the rezoned land from Goldicott onto our campus as well. How do these green spaces factor into the ongoing development of the campus?
GL: The biodiversity of the campus is critical. We’ve had very deep conversations with Indigenous consultancies, as well, to inform this, and a Landscape Master Plan has also been developed in parallel. We’re seeking to preserve and enhance the creek and the bushlands adjacent to Goldicott House and to increase the provision of learning landscapes within the campus as we progressively open out open spaces. We’re very lucky that we have those established assets, and we’re seeking to preserve, enhance, and engage with them as much as possible.
BBC: Is there anything else you’d like to really emphasise for the BBC community?
GL: I think that it’s important that there’s been a very deep consultation process on this Master Plan Campus Vision. We’ve spoken to the boys at length, the staff, the Old Collegians, the Executive, members of the community, members of the Council. The highlight of that process was the sessions with the boys. We witnessed their passion for the College and the importance they placed on culture and inclusion. We’ve also undertaken building visits. As a collective team, we are all aware of the importance of being good custodians of such a unique opportunity. And things are being done; things are being implemented. They’ve come from conversations. They’ve not just come from an architect’s view. As we go forward, what I’d really like to emphasise is that every project will be informed by deep consultation.
I’d like to commend the Headmaster and the Executive as well. This willingness to be so open and to consult widely is not always the case in schools. This Master Plan Campus Vision has been created with a tremendous amount of contribution from the BBC community, and the leadership have enabled that to occur, and that’s tremendous. Because it’s not ours, it’s not the Executive’s. It’s for the boys, that’s the most important thing.