Acacia Hill School

Acacia Hill School is the primary provider of special needs education in central Australia. The school educates students identified as having moderate to severe intellectual and multiple or complex physical disabilities.  Students range in age from three to nineteen and attend the school from across central Australia. 77% of students identify as Indigenous.  

The new buildings provide the school with a fresh and striking identity that differentiates it from the government primary school sharing the same lot. These buildings contain administration and staff areas, a new multipurpose hall, library, art room and sensory therapy room.  The new entry provides students and staff a sense of identity, welcome and celebration when arriving.

 The sweeping roof is a signpost for the school, a wayfinding device for site circulation and directs storm water to the perimeter of the site.  The façade colours are drawn from the colours of central Australian art, and the steel cutout mural reference the endemic acacia trees on the neighbouring sacred site.

The new site layout creates a large central green open space, an important therapeutic and multi-purpose space for the students that doubles as a retention basin to manage stormwater flows. 

Discreet but effective access control and site security are important to the safety of the students and to support staff in their work.  The easy legibility of the new campus design clarifies site circulation and different user entry points. 

Within the site student independence has been supported through clear sight lines and way finding and an easy flow of spaces. This has been balanced with the school’s need to control views and movement for student safety, and the need for options to suit the different and changing intellectual, behavioural and therapeutic requirements of the students.

A high level of functional flexibility in the design has added value to the school’s program. One example of this is the multipurpose hall, which is accessible and flexible for whole of school gatherings, individual private physical therapy, and can also be rented to the public out of hours while restricting access to the rest of the school. 

The multipurpose hall and therapy spaces connect to each other and to a private garden space to allow staff to separate students in quite spaces if required.  Depending on the needs of the students on any given day, the hall can be opened to the garden, it can be entirely blacked out, or converted into a cocoon like space lit by high translucent walls.