Project Description

The Queensland state heritage listed Treacy Precinct is home to the foundation buildings of St Joseph’s Nudgee College. These important buildings and open spaces have been engrained in the psyche of many generations of Nudgee students for over 130 years. However, over the years the circa 1891 buildings and surrounding malls had been detrimentally altered and crowded by unsympathetic development.

In a transformative conservation and adaptive reuse project, the Treacy Precinct – comprising the Treacy Building (original architects include Andrea Stombuco and James Percy Cowlishaw), Duhig Building and the Chapel (both by original architect Thomas Ramsay Hall), Edmund Rice Mall, and Old Boys Mall – has been returned to an earlier appearance, form, and spatial arrangement. The project is the culmination of over a decade of strategic master planning that involved demolishing several 1970s buildings, structures, and other accretions, and adaptation of several large underutlised spaces. By bringing back students, staff, the boarding population and the wider community to the precinct, the foundation buildings have been reestablished as the key focal point of the College.

Guided by the College conservation management plan, the principles of the Burra Charter, careful archival research, and an understanding of the heritage significance, has led to a sensitive design response whereby the previously obscured bell tower form – Mary’s Tower – has been revealed, the earlier light-weight and open verandah forms, including the original cast iron lacework, have been reinterpreted with contemporary detailing, the lost ornate facades of the Duhig Building revealed again, and the original colour schemes of all the buildings reinstated.

The interiors have been refurbished and reconfigured to meet contemporary needs for teaching, learning and boarding environments. The planning of the classrooms and key staff areas privilege access to natural light and ventilation and adjacency to the shady and protected verandahs. The project delivered: 10 new classrooms; offices, meeting rooms and social spaces for 100 staff; 12 bed health centre for boarding students; College Museum and archive; improvements to boarding dining hall, servery, and kitchen back of house areas; amenities for public, staff and students including end of trip facilities and change rooms; and lifts. The key additions are the new encircling verandahs that provide all weather circulation, break out space, surveillance, and equitable access. 

The interior adaptations to the buildings involved removing several false ceilings and mezzanine floors to make legible and exploit generous interior volumes throughout. Conservation works included restoration and reconstruction of timbered ceilings and mouldings, double hung counterbalanced windows and joinery, plasterwork, wall vents, and reinstating interior colours and finishes.

The work on the external spaces, malls and landscaping around the buildings has renewed important and lost campus connections and reactivated community gathering spaces. The project will enable current and future generations to connect to the historic precinct while providing a dynamic contemporary student and staff experience.