Bentleigh Secondary College wanted to educate students about the environment and help them become sustainable citizens through building design.

The Meditation and Indigenous Cultural Centre is a place to engage the community with their existing sustainability initiatives and as a home for their Mindful Meditation and Indigenous Education curriculum.

Working with the school and local community, dwp|suters delivered an exemplar of sustainable, community focused design. The building is a key part of the school’s desire to create a sustainable campus and change the behaviours of students, staff and the wider community in best practice environmental management.

Set in the school’s forest landscape, the building acts as a piece of furniture–something to be sat in, on and around–whist the students engage with the natural surrounds and a curriculum focused on the environment, indigenous culture and mindfulness meditation.

The external shape of the building is a response to the site so as to maximize the views and limit direct eastern and western summer sun. Renewable timber was used with the intention  that if the facility is demolished, the majority of the materials and their embodied energy can be reused and recycled in many forms.

INITIATIVES

  • Environmental Education: The building is conceived to educate students about the importance of sustainable design. Architecture plays an extremely important role in education. Having spaces that are conducive to learning and that are places that students want to be in improves teaching and learning outcomes. The project helps students experience firsthand that they can make a difference, and at the same time demonstrates that the built environment can and does play a positive role in the future.
  • Passive Heating and Cooling: The building is designed with large exaggerated awnings over each window ensuring that solar heat gain is used to its best potential.
  • Carbon Sequestration: The new pavilion is constructed entirely of renewable timber and showcases the principles of carbon capture, as all the timber in the pavilion comes from renewable timber sources.
  • Geothermal Exchange: A Geothermal Exchange system will heat and cool the building efficiently.

Images: Emma Cross.