Designed by GHD Design and Grimshaw, Wurun Senior Campus → brings together senior students from Collingwood College and Fitzroy High School - two state schools in inner Melbourne - to provide a flexible, welcoming, tertiary-style environment that fosters agency, choice and interdisciplinary learning.

“We are delighted that Wurun Senior Campus, a new vertical school and the first initiative of a large urban regeneration precinct, has been celebrated for how it promotes connection and learning across a spectrum of formal and informal spaces,” said Neil Stonell, Partner at Grimshaw

The building form reimagines the multi-level commercial vernacular, stepping up to create a series of landscaped outdoor terraces. Each level connects directly to the interior learning environment to leverage the diverse pedagogy, community connectivity and wellbeing benefits of natural light, greenery, views, and recreation spaces.

As the first initiative of the Fitzroy Gasworks urban regeneration precinct, the school was designed to integrate with the adjoining sports centre which is now in construction, incorporate First Peoples-led history, culture and storytelling, maximise access to outdoor areas on a tight urban site, and be highly sustainable and connect with the surrounding community, creative, business and entrepreneurial hubs.

The design response focused on creating a tertiary-oriented experience aligned to a self-directed and project-based approach. Each level of the Campus is designed to accommodate a specific learning precinct which features a range of learning environments. Multi-purpose atria spaces at the campus heart provide flexible gathering options across the six levels.

For connectivity between the precincts, a colour coded ‘street’ winds through the building, with stairways linking the multi-level voids to provide visual connectivity and enable intuitive wayfinding.

Local Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people were consulted and commissioned to inform and develop artworks, murals, interpretive work, the campus logo and provide input into Indigenous planting.

The First Nations designs featured throughout the campus are a rare example of interpretive storytelling about contested and difficult histories in a Victorian public space that is not a museum.