Urbis worked with the Queensland Department of Education, universities and architecture firms to develop reference designs for the first two new state schools built in Brisbane’s inner city in the past 50 years.
The new vertical high schools will be located on constrained sites in busy urban locations. The designs needed to encompass both the practical and aspirational elements for the schools, and address concerns regarding safety and green space for students.
Through individual Enquiry by Design (EbD) processes and workshops, Urbis created an intensive program of collaboration and consultation with diverse stakeholder groups from both the educational and infrastructure worlds
This resulted in a reference design for each school with implicit support from the participants. Each school had both unique and shared challenges, priorities and stakeholders, requiring a common but not identical design process.
A combination of strategic stakeholder and community engagement, a strong program of targeted enquiry, design expertise and facilitation magic delivered the basics of a credible design for further refinement, and stakeholder buy-in for the overall project.
“Collaboration and consultation with diverse stakeholder groups helped to quickly deliver reference designs supported by the participants.