Designing Australian Schools

Project Contact

Professor Julie Willis

Location: Level: 01 Room: 107, Melbourne School of Design, Parkville

Project Details

Designing Australia’s Schools is an historical, cross disciplinary study of innovations in the design of Australian primary and secondary schools across the twentieth century. The project builds upon and integrates the perspectives of educational, social and architectural history to examine innovative school design in relation to developments in government policy, curriculum reform and community expectations.

The overarching aims of the project are as follows:

to identify the interactions between design, social ideology and pedagogy by tracing the nexus between social policies, educational policies, and their realization in the built form and use of schools;
to examine the school as a locus for fostering community values and citizenship in the modern nation by situating the making of school environments in the wider context of historical, social and cultural change in Australia;
to determine the international significance of Australian contributions to innovation in twentieth century school architecture through a comparative analysis of North American, European, British and Australian design approaches;
to locate this history of innovative design of educational buildings within current policy frameworks and approaches to new school building, renovation and maintenance programs; and
to inform and guide the future direction of the documentation and conservation of school building stock in Australia.

Browse Archives

Researchers

Prof Julie Willis (University of Melbourne)
Prof Kate Darian-Smith (University of Melbourne)
Prof Philip Goad (University of Melbourne)
A/Prof Hannah Lewi (University of Melbourne)
Prof Julie Mcleod (University of Melbourne)
A/Prof David Nichols (University of Melbourne)
Dr Elaine Harwood (English Heritage)
Dr Cameron Logan (University of Melbourne)
Dr Sianan Healy (University of Melbourne)

Funding

This project is funded by the Australian Research Council

Research Outcomes

Presentations & Exhibitions

Hannah Lewi & Caroline Jordan, ‘State School No. 1490: 1968-1972,’ exhibition and catalogue proceedings in Situation Exhibition and Symposium, IDEA Conference, RMIT, Melbourne (2014), 101-107. http://idea-edu.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/SITUATION_14_web.pdf
Kate Darian-Smith, Julie Willis and Julie McLeod, ‘Space, Place and Purpose in Designing Australian School,’ Panel presentation, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, 12 June 2014.
Kate Darian-Smith,‘School Places and Spaces: Children’s Perspectives,’ Australian Association for Research in Education International Conference, Adelaide, 3 December 2013.
Kate Darian-Smith, ‘Memory, History and Heritage,’ Building an Archival Memory of Canberra Symposium, Humanities Research Centre, ANU, 24 September 2013.
Kate Darian-Smith, ‘Childhood, Community and Place in Canberra,’ Keynote presentation at Shaping Canberra: the Lived Experience of Place, Home and Capital Conference, Humanities Research Centre, ANU, Canberra, 17-20 September 2013.
Kate Darian-Smith, ‘Domestic Spaces and School Places: Vocational Education, Gender and Race in Mid-Twentieth Century Australia,’ School is Another Place Symposium, Menzies Centre, Kings College London, 5-7 June 2013.
Kate Darian-Smith, ‘Carnegie in the Antipodes: Philanthropy, public culture and education’, Buildings, Books and Blackboards: Intersecting Narratives, Australia and New Zealand History of Education Conference, RMIT University, 28 November – 01 December 2012.
Kate Darian-Smith, Discussant, ‘Schooling without School Buildings’ Panel, Buildings, Books and Blackboards: Intersecting Narratives, Australia and New Zealand History of Education Conference, RMIT University, 28 November – 01 December 2012.

Published Research

Kate Darian-Smith and Julie Willis (eds), Designing Schools: Space, Place and Pedagogy, Routledge, London and New York, book under contract. https://www.routledge.com/Designing-Schools-Space-Place-and-Pedagogy/Darian-Smith-Willis/p/book/9781138886223
Hannah Lewi & Cameron Logan, 'Stimulating Schools' in Economy and Architecture, Juliet Odgers, Mhairi McVicar and Stephen Kite (eds), Routledge Press: London (2015) pp. 204-216.
Hannah Lewi ‘Back to School: understanding the evidential value of the modern documentary’, The Journal of Architecture 20, no. 2 (2015), pp. 193-214. (DOI:10.1080/13602365.2015.1025813)
Sianan Healy and Kate Darian-Smith, ‘Educational Spaces and the ‘Whole Child’: A Spatial History of School Design, Pedagogy and the Modern Australian Nation’, History Compass 13, no. 6 (2015), pp. 275-287. (DOI: 10.1111/hic3.12237)
Philip Goad, ‘Free Spirits, New Education and the New School: A Different Account of Modernism in Australian Architecture 1925- 1975,’ Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians,Australia and New Zealand: 32, Paul Hogben and Judith O’Callaghan, Eds., (2015), pp. 206-217. http://sahanz2015.be.unsw.edu.au/papers/Goad-Free-Spirits-New-Education....pdf
Cameron Logan, ‘Anti-institutions: Schooling without School Buildings,’ Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand: 32, Paul Hogben and Judith O’Callaghan, Eds., (2015), pp. 341-350. http://sahanz2015.be.unsw.edu.au/papers/Logan_Anti-institutions.pdf
Alberto Pugnale and Alberto Bologna, ‘Dante Bini’s “New Architectural Formulae”: Construction, Collapse and Demolition of Binishells in Australia 1974-2015,’ Proceedings of the Society ofArchitectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand: 32, Paul Hogben and Judith O’Callaghan, Eds., (2015), pp. 488-499. http://sahanz2015.be.unsw.edu.au/papers/Pugnale-Bologna_Dante-Binis-New-Architectural-Formulae.pdf
Hannah Lewi, ‘Plans on Film: Cut to the Professional Smoking His Pipe’, Fabrications Journal 24, no.2 (2014), pp. 268-289. (DOI: 10.1080/10331867.2014.961224)
Kate Darian-Smith and Nikki Henningham, ‘Site, School, Community: Educating Modern Girls at the J.H. Boyd Domestic College, South Melbourne, 1930s–1980s, History of Education Review 43, no. 2 (2014) , pp. 152-171. (DOI: 10.1108/HER-03-2014-0018)
Kate Darian-Smith and Sianan Healy, ‘Children, Childhood and Cultural Heritage: An International Perspective’, Conservation Bulletin 73 (Winter 2014), pp. 3–5. http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/publications/conservation-bulletin-73/cb-73.pdf
Cameron Logan, Philip Goad, Hannah Lewi, Julie McLeod, Sianan Healy, Kate Darian-Smith, ‘The school environment as history’, Agora 48, no. 4 (2013), pp. 46-53. http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=737011100696057;res=IELHSS

Publications, forthcoming

Kate Darian-Smith, ‘Noisy Classrooms and the ‘Quiet Corner’: Memories of School, Sound and the Senses’ in Damousi, J and Hamilton, P (eds), Sound, Memory and the Senses: Intimate Cultural Histories, Routledge, NY, in press.
Kate Darian-Smith, ‘Domestic Spaces and School Places: Vocational Education, Gender and Race in Mid-Twentieth Century Australia’ in Kate Darian-Smith and Julie Willis (eds), Designing Schools: Space, Place and Pedagogy, Routledge, London and New York, book under contract.