FORBO FLOORING SYSTEMS HIGHLIGHT
This section of ArchIdea features a selected project in which the floor is the hero of the issue. It demonstrates how Forbo Flooring Systems can complement the design of a building.
North Melbourne Primary School
NORTH MELBOURNE PRIMARY SCHOOL’S NEW SIX-STOREY CAMPUS IS BOLD, BRIGHT AND COMMUNITY-ORIENTED. DESIGNED BY ARM ARCHITECTURE, THE VERTICAL CAMPUS MAXIMISES THE POTENTIAL OF A SLOPING SITE WITH A TETRIS-LIKE STRUCTURE THAT INCORPORATES LIVELY OUTDOOR SPACES, COLOURFUL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS AND REFERENCES TO THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE THROUGHOUT.
Photos: John Gollings
Two contrasting schools
In 1874, North Melbourne Primary School (NMPS) opened one of the first primary schools close to Melbourne’s city centre. The building on Errol Street is still there today, a low-rise, sprawling complex made out of brick, reminiscent of a historic British manor. It boasts a pointed arch above its main entrance, chimneys and duo-tone brickwork surrounding its paned windows. Almost a decade and a half later, NMPS has built a new school, just a stones throw away from the existing campus.
A design that represents the 21st century
The new school expresses itself as the opposite of the old campus. The new Molesworth Street Campus stands six stories tall, all squeezed onto a compact site, and brimming with vibrant colours. Instead of referencing the nation’s British colonial heritage, it acknowledges the site’s Traditional Owners, the Wurundjeri people. It is meant to be the NMPS’ entryway into the future, explains Sarah Nightingale, the school’s Founding Principal. “This is a world that is rapidly changing, connected, adapting, and evolving,” she continues, “the design of the project will enable our school to grow into the future and promote a learning design which represents 21st century skills.”
A vertical campus on a triangular plot
ARM Architecture designed the building as a ‘vertical campus’, a multi-storied school to accommodate up to 525 children. The design fits all program elements together as if it were an intricate spatial game of Tetris, making it a unique model for inner-city educational design. In addition to expertly weaving all the pieces together, the design does something else, it sparks curiosity.
Orange coloured façade fins
The building’s façades and outdoor spaces create a sense of excitement. On the plot’s east side - its tapered end - the school announces itself to the neighbourhood through a prominent, angular tower. Rising six stories high, the street-facing façade is wrapped in a playful shell made of orange coloured metal fins, covered in a dotted pattern. The fins function as sun shading elements, allowing natural light from the north to enter the classrooms whilst protecting it against the harsh afternoon sun. At the other end of the plot, where the tower faces the playground, the building is clad in moulded precast concrete panels. The choice to use a repetitive façade system maximised the ease of construction and made the design cost-effective.
Throughout all floors, the architects have made spaces where children
are excited to be
Rooftop play areas for all ages
The school’s landscaping might be the main attraction for pupils. Children can rejoice in the large play area next to the community hub - including slides that lead down to where the action is - and an agile sports area on one of the lower roofs, making the most of the shade provided by the school’s tower. The youngest pupils might have the most exciting play area with their outdoor space found on top of the tower.
Community hub for the neighbourhood
Parents and children approach the school through five cave-like entryways, boldly marked in flaming orange. These access points ensure safe entry from all sides. Upon entry, they arrive at the site’s wider end, where the tower connects to a low-rise building that houses a community hub at the ground and lower-ground levels. The hub programmatically connects the school to the neighbourhood: it is designed so that community groups can use the facilities outside of school hours for sports, music lessons or other social activities.
Dense program spread out over five floors
The exterior’s bold design and landscaping spark curiosity for what’s inside. The building packs quite the program: 21 classrooms, specialist learning areas for subjects like cooking and music, a library, a performing arts hub with tiered seating for up to 200 children and a top floor kindergarten. The library is the heart of the campus. It bridges indoor and outdoor spaces, and together with the reception area offers sweeping views of the play area and the auditorium. All learning spaces serve multiple functions, which makes the design adaptable and minimises the need for future construction.
Diversity of learning spaces
Moving upward, the building’s levels are dedicated to teaching. The first level caters to specialised learning, including art, science, and food-tech spaces. The rooftop play area above the sports court connects to a canteen, and a multipurpose space provides for wet-weather programs and outside school hours care. The community hub includes a competition-grade netball and basketball court, a music space, changing rooms, storage and toilets.
Connection to the Wurundjeri people
The school’s design acknowledges the ground’s Traditional Owners. The connection to the Wurundjeri people becomes apparent in the interiors, where indigenous themes are central to the design. To do this appropriately and in a way that primary school children would understand and value, the team involved N’arweet Dr Carolyn Briggs AM, a senior Boonwurrung Elder and Founder of the Boonwurrung Foundation who, coincidentally, is a former pupil of North Melbourne Primary school herself. Together, they tried to assign character and placemaking throughout all floors of the building.
Colours, patterns and names
Each building level is a layer representing an element of country, language and culture. The colourful walls, marmoleum flooring and intricate patterns applied throughout are based on Indigenous ecosystems and stories. The ground floor for instance is called the ‘Emu’s Egg’; the third floor with its earthy tones references the ‘Land’ and the fourth level is the ‘Sky’, expressed in bright blue tones. It deepens the pupil’s understanding and connection with each other and the land.
Neighbourhood involvement
The building extends its reach in other ways too. The architects and school worked together with the local community to create the signage around the new campus. In combination with the energetic design, and the out of school hours use it offers the neighbourhood, the building has proven to be a success amongst pupils, parents and visitors. “The new build has exceeded our expectations”, says Sarah Nightingale, founding principal of the school. “The Molesworth Campus is an impressive architectural design, which the students and families have enthusiastically embraced. The design has provided places for the community to gather and has situated our school as a prominent landmark.”
Architect: ARM ARCHITECTURE
For this vertical primary school project in North Melbourne, ARM Architecture selected Forbo’s Marmoleum Marbled as the main flooring solution. The multi-level campus includes heavily used circulation areas, learning spaces and specialist rooms, making a durable, resilient and low-maintenance floor essential. With Marmoleum being climate positive from cradle to gate, it ensures a healthy building for all users.
Marmoleum’s extensive colour range also enabled each level to have its own identity and clear wayfinding. In total, 13 colours were used throughout the building, across main circulation routes, classrooms, wet areas and the central gathering and presentation space. In this way, Forbo Flooring contributes both functionally and visually to an inspiring, high-performance learning environment.