A major project for the Sunshine Special Developmental School. Our brief was to provide a new Junior Building, 2 Senior Buildings and a Specialist Building as well as a Bus Storage Shed. This was our first foray working in the special needs sector of the education department and it was a truely life affirming experience for those fortunate enough to work on this project.

Sunshine Special Developmental School caters for P-12 students with complex needs of moderate to severe intellectual disability and our design role was to navigate a way to assist the Schools teaching practice in what is a very challenging learning environment.

The School provides highly personalized, ability-based learning programs for each student and because most students are non-verbal, this is aided by personal visual communication devices. Allied health is also embedded in the learning setting with a variety of professionals supporting students through their complex needs.

We conducted a series of workshops (led by the remarkable Educational Specialist-Scott Alterator) to further the work already established by the School for a Model Classroom. An ideal classroom used as a demonstration space to support the practice of teachers. A space with distinct but overlapping pedagogical settings and other zones central to learning success. This became the core to our design thinking and typology for the project.

Self-regulation is a critical part of the student learning process at specialist schools.  It became clear that we needed to create supportive, internal spaces for student refuge as well as immediate, accessible and inviting outdoor spaces to aid student decompression.