UTS develops new master plan for local school

UTS architecture students will get hands-on experience developing a master plan for the campus redesign of a local high school. Postgraduate students and staff from UTS’s school of architecture have been appointed to guide the International Grammar School (IGS) through the development of their 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” said 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,” she 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,” Colnan said.