UTS students lead a major school campus redesign

Postgraduate students and staff from UTS's School of Architecture have been appointed to guide the International Grammar School (IGS) through the development of its first master plan and campus redesign.

The inner-Sydney precinct neighbours established the long-term partnership after the independent school decided it wanted to modernise its campus to accommodate changing technology and new education models.

"IGS has been an amazingly open client who wants us to experiment to find the best solutions to their spatial constraints. They hired us because they want new ideas; they want to push school design as far as possible and feel that students will be more daring and open minded than seasoned professionals," said UTS Professor Deborah Ascher Barnstone.

After months of site visits, intensive design workshops and a consultation session with leading Sydney architect Camilla Block, the 12 students presented the first phase of the redesign – the senior common room – to the school's board members.

Principal of IGS Shauna Colnan who has described the project as a "collaboration filled with a sense of curiosity and wonder" commented:

"The calibre of the students' work has been astonishing, resourceful, creative, intuitive, clever and insightful. Their designs are helping us to reimagine our campus into the future for the decades ahead," Ms Colnan said.

"It's also been such a wonderful experience for our year 12 students to work with UTS and contribute their fresh ideas to the project. Many are highly creative and architecture and design are the career paths to which many aspire."

UTS Master of Architecture student Eleanor Peres worked in a group keen to showcase their bold and radical perspective:

"We really wanted to look past traditional aesthetic modifications, so our group's unorthodox idea of converting existing balconies into useable, workable spaces was definitely not what they were expecting to hear."

"It has been such an empowering, positive experience because they treat us like professionals and take our recommendations and advice very seriously. This has given us so much confidence in our ability to deliver innovative yet viable proposals," Ms Peres said.

The year-long project is the first of its kind for the UTS Master of Architecture program but allows for research candidates from within the architecture school to also be involved. With such positive outcomes already realised, the program is likely to generate interest from other organisations seeking similar guidance.

"These unique assignments present so many wonderful opportunities for our students as they don't often get to work on real-life projects, with real clients and real constraints until they start working at a professional design studio," Professor Barnstone said.