St Michael’s Grammar School’s Centre for Inquiry & Innovation (CII) emerged from a sustained period of pedagogical reflection and community engagement. The design strategy reframes a modest existing Victorian house into an enduring and responsive learning environment. Anchoring the school’s vision of “creating enquiring minds, learning with and for the world,” the CII supports and encourages student agency through collaborative, curiosity-led learning across the primary years.

Working closely with students, educators, and families, significant original features were preserved - fireplaces, cornices, and stained glass - while introducing a carefully layered sequence of spaces that support distinct modes of learning. The adaptive reuse of the heritage building provides a space to provoke, explore, focus and create. With new acoustic treatment between thresholds, concealed joinery and framed views combine in an opportunity for visual transparency while also creating areas for retreat.

Indoor and outdoor zones are woven together throughout to enable connection and concentration amongst various users. The integration of covered amphitheatres, yarning circles and a kitchen garden extend learning into the landscape, where indigenous planting supports biodiversity and place-based engagement. Biophilic principles underpin the overall design, nurturing calmness, tactility and flexibility. As a celebration of difference, CII creates a space for differing learning styles as a nurturing environment where inquisitiveness is encouraged, and knowledge can be easily shared.