The building is a three story structure housing music, media studies, drama, dance and film studies together with strategic practice rooms, offices and editing suites and an EAL area (English as Another Language). The roof and north wall of the new building are copper-clad, and act as a canted book-end to the school site. Thermal mass has been used within the internal teaching and circulation spaces to allow for night cooling in summer and the storage of latent heat in the winter. The classrooms are mechanically ventilated with heat recovery while circulation spaces for the whole building are naturally ventilated through high level vents within a three story atrium. This atrium also allows natural light into the deeper areas of the plan and workrooms off circulation spaces borrow light through glazed screens. The form and construction of the building is expressed internally as much as externally.
Photography by Dennis Gilbert/View