Razan Shannak

The Brindabella building of the Macquarie primary school (Canberra, ACT) suffers from poor envelope, orientation, and indoor planning, resulting in poor thermal comfort and excessive energy consumption. The client also requires more educational spaces to meet the school population growth. My investigation concluded that the existing building could accommodate the required additional spaces with minimum additional construction, triggering the concept of an efficient adaptive reuse following the philosophy of “Less is More”. Less demolition, construction, waste and most importantly less impact on the environment. More utilisation of the existing fabric and a step closer to Carbon neutrality.

The design process articulates around preserving the existing portal frame, and most of the spinal and external walls. In addition to replanning the internal spaces to create interactive learning spaces and producing pocket extensions facing north and south to solve the orientation problems. The building envelope is improved, and internal glazing is used to allow light penetration and borrowing.

The building performance is improved by considering passive and active systems, such as efficient daylight utilisation to decrease dependency on artificial lighting, thermal insulation for walls and roofs, rainwater harvesting, solar roof tiles to generate electricity, high efficiency VRF air conditioning system and introducing LED lighting.