Hale Memorial Hall and Stow Precinct | KHA

KHA’s Hale Memorial Hall and Stow Precinct sets up a heritage-listed and nationally significant modernist building for the next one hundred years. The original, raw grey concrete of Memorial Hall, reputedly Australia’s first brutalist building, had long been shrouded in acrylic cream paint – a more agreeable finish, for many, amongst its beige brick neighbours. The school’s stipulation that an off-white paint finish on the concrete should be maintained is just one aspect of the project brief which the architects have cleverly adapted – to create a beautiful and unified campus precinct.

The architects’ solution to accommodate substantially increased seating capacity for the hall is ingenious. The architects widened the hall within the original, lateral envelope and stretched the hall along its primary axis. The original and impressive proportions of the heroic and iconic façade and entrance have been maintained, and complementary new details and building elements are artfully inserted into the original building fabric.

The new ‘Stow Precinct’ theatre building incorporates clever, multi-functional planning and programming strategies that enable a sometimes mono-functional building type to be fully integrated into the day-to-day teaching and learning life of the campus. The new buildings are beautifully scaled and proportioned, both in relation to the interface with Memorial Hall and to the site’s lower-scaled residential context and setting.

The ‘soft’ aesthetic of the limestone-coloured concrete and creamy bricks is enhanced by the subtle rounding of masonry corners on the new buildings that forms a subtle counterpoint to the sharper edges of original brutalist hall structure.

This is a fine piece of architecture to enrich the performing arts, and the ceremonial life and heart of the school.