The new Senior Centre at MLC School is part of the overall Master Plan for the MLC Burwood campus, prepared by BVN in 2012. The existing campus was crowded with outmoded buildings and courtyard spaces that were either inaccessible to the students or ill-designed for easy connectivity. 

With the demolition of several smaller buildings and the implementation of two large courtyards accessible from a new centralised larger building, the layout and navigation of the campus was radically altered. A new external spine to link the new building, the courtyards and the remaining buildings on the site, has enabled the topography of the campus to make sense. It draws people through the site and easily introduces the new building and external teaching spaces. 

The café, located on the refurbished ground floor of an existing building, spills out onto both of the new larger courtyards. Under a canopy roof, this new heart-of-the-school also leads from the connective spine linking the courtyards to the Senior Centre. 

The Senior Centre is a new four storey building, designed much like an office building – columns spaced evenly across the floor with the application of light-weight partitioning. This allows the floor plate to be easily reconfigured, much like an office tenancy—enabling the building to respond to developing teaching and learning models from the traditional to the future focused. 

Educational spaces are located around the perimeter of the building, with non-sectioned areas left open to provide flexibility for teaching requirements. A variety of different learning spaces—enclosed teaching spaces, open collaborative learning spaces, science laboratories, amphitheatre seating, seminar rooms and quiet rooms, provide staff and students with a flexible, contemporary building.

The building is focused around an internal, central atrium. This atrium acts as a lightwell with a large skylight above flooding light onto each level and down to the ground floor amphitheatre. The ‘pop-out’ meeting and quiet rooms also project off the atrium and the stairs run through this space as well. 

The staff room areas are easily visible to the students and a service desk is available to students for easy communication with the teaching faculty. Students and teachers share the same kitchen space on the floor encouraging dialogue and random interaction in much the same way an office space uses the kitchen area to encourage collaborative informal discussions. 

The perimeter of the building is composed of a full height, double glazed high-performance façade, which maximises access to daylight. A skin of perforated folded aluminium panels wraps around the glazed façade, providing sun-shading and privacy. These automated louvre windows naturally ventilate the building. The facade is pierced by large pop-out windows, which allows access to the views and offers vignettes of the learning experience happening within the building.