Ao Tawhiti Unlimited Discovery School
By CO-STUDIO
New Zealand’s first vertical and open plan school based in the heart of Christchurch. The architecture places learning processes at the centre of the development, with the design of the school creating learning spaces that enable flexibility, focus, inspiration, and supports experiential and inquiry-based learning.
The new school site is within Christchurch City Central, hosting 800 students, in a multi-storey building. Ao Tawhiti’s unique urban location presented us with the opportunity to create a design that allows maximum engagement with the city and use it as an adjunct to the indoor learning environment.
The innovative model for learning, places the student at the centre, allowing the building has been designed as a purposeful extension of this ethos, with no staff-specific spaces to enhance an equal relationship between students, teachers and other adults. The central atrium, stairwell, social and eating spaces create a heart to the school, and the ‘learning communities’ on each floor enable the building to work as a whole.
This is a building modelled partly on modern offices, where students, staff and learning supporters are encouraged to interact and stay beyond their normal hours.
Internally, a learning space is created for flexibility, versatility and agility through a combination of specialist and general space. The rooms are specifically designed to create engaging spaces that support experiential and inquiry-based learning.
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COMMUNICATE, COLLABORATE, COOPERATE, COORDINATE
An Inspired Approach
CO-STUDIO is our architecture practice with a shifted emphasis to solving built environment problems with people. This people-centric approach is inspired by the words of a Pritzker Prize winning architect Glenn Murcutt, describing the best approach to architecture: “We don’t design buildings. We discover them”. This inspired our motto:
Design Through Discovery
Spending the time to listen to you and understand what is important to you, is at our heart. We firmly believe that successful, truly sustainable, and enduring architecture is discovered through a process that fully engages with those who have a long-term relationship with their buildings. Everyone has a key part to play, and our skill is in understanding your needs and those of your stakeholders including tenants, visitors, customers, builders, councils, design teams and maintenance people.
Guardians of the Earth
Protecting the environment is not only important to us, but integral to our operations and services. We recognise the role that architects play to reduce our carbon emissions and commit to working toward net zero carbon for CO-STUDIO projects by 2030. As part of this role, we approach every project with a sustainability lens. We seek to identify the barriers to embrace sustainable solutions, and then work to dismantle them.
If some of our projects and faces seem familiar, that's because we are part of the wider Stephenson & Turner Group. If you've worked with us before, expect the same passion and quality. If you're meeting us for the first time, we'd love to hear from you. We love a good chat (and coffee!)
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