Roseville College. Photograph by Brett Boardman.

  • Client ::

    • Roseville College

  • Location ::

    • Roseville, Sydney

  • Completed ::

    • 2005 - 2008

  • Team ::

    • Peter Tonkin, Wolfgang Ripberger, Julie Mackenzie, Bettina Siegmund, John Chesterman

Project Description::

Tonkin Zulaikha Greer were the winners of a design competition for the Joy Yeo Performing Arts Centre at the heart of Roseville College. The building is the centerpiece of the masterplan for the site, creating a unified campus following the redevelopment of much of the school.

The complex brief for the building accommodates a wide range of functions to foster the growing music and drama program at the school, within a highly constrained, steeply sloping site. The budget was modest for the required accommodation, and this necessitated a very careful selection of materials and finishes to ensure quality and durability.

The Centre comprises a 350-seat auditorium, with state-of-the-art acoustics, lighting and sound equipment, housing a variety of activities ranging from intimate performances to full stage musical productions. It is equipped with the latest presentation technology for lectures and seminars to cater for the entire school community. The Centre provides an extensive range of specialist rooms including orchestra and band rehearsal rooms, music class rooms, drama studio, recital rooms, practice rooms, a computer and keyboard laboratory, instrument storage and staff rooms.

A spacious glass Foyer flows onto a new central Quadrangle that has become the heart of the school campus. The Foyer accommodates varied school and community functions as well as being an ideal space to showcase students’ work. The Foyer and its brick colonnade extend to reface the 1980s Multi-Purpose Hall, creating a unified indoor-outdoor ‘public room’ for the College.

Face brick was selected for the dominant external wall material, to link the new building to a range of recent and heritage buildings on the site. The irregular site suggested a contemporary angled geometry for the building, functionally related to the need for non-rectilinear volumes internally for acoustic reasons. This geometry inspired the row of ‘dancing’ columns forming the generously-scaled colonnade which links the Centre and the Multi-Purpose Hall to the new Quad.