Jagera, Yuggera, and Ugarapul
Queensland
Darling Downs and West Moreton
Hymba Yumba Independent School’s Stage 3 Performance Hall and Arts Building completes a significant chapter in the school’s long-standing collaboration with Deicke Richards, delivering a new cultural and creative heart for the campus. The project brings together specialist arts learning spaces and a multi-purpose performance hall within a single adaptable building enabling the entire school community to gather on site.
Located on a constrained site shaped by bushland, flood overlays, and bushfire risk, the building adopts a compact vertical form that minimises footprint while strengthening connections to Country. The naturally ventilated Performance Hall opens toward surrounding bushland, operating as a verandah-like civic space for sports, assemblies, and community events. Purpose-built studios, galleries and teaching spaces support contemporary creative practice alongside cultural knowledge sharing, with integrated First Nations artworks embedded throughout.
Deicke Richards guided the project through complex site conditions to realise a culturally grounded and responsive building.
The multipurpose hall and specialist classrooms support flexible, high-quality learning experiences that reflect HYIS’s “Culture First, Then Curriculum” approach. These spaces enable performance, visual and creative arts, community gatherings, exhibitions and collaborative learning, allowing jarjum to engage in learning through doing, creating and sharing. Purpose-built specialist classrooms provide environments for focused arts instruction, small-group learning and culturally responsive pedagogy, while the multipurpose hall brings students, staff, families and community together. Collectively, these spaces strengthen cultural identity, engagement and belonging, supporting diverse learning styles and fostering meaningful connections between curriculum, culture and community.
Luke Watson, Design Architect
Julia Comer, Project Architect
John Deicke, Architect
Khai Jie Ng, Architect
EDGE Consulting Engineers, Structural Engineer
Vee Design, Landscape Consultant
BSI, Electrical Consultant
BSI, Mechanical Engineer
ACOR, Hydraulic Consultant
JHA, ESD Consultant
Coastline, Building Surveyor
Stantec, Acoustic Consultant
Sotera, Fire Engineer
Aunty Nicole Williams and Aunty Adelaide Saylor, Artist