MacRobertson Girls' High School buildings facts for kids
Quick facts for kids MacRobertson Girls’ High School buildings |
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MacRobertson Girls' High School main entry
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| Type | State secondary school campus |
| Etymology | Sir Michael Macpherson Robertson |
| Location | 350–370 Kings Way, Albert Park, South Melbourne, Victoria, Australia |
| Founder | Sir Michael Macpherson Robertson |
| Built | 1934 |
| Architect | Norman Seabrook of Seabrook and Fildes |
| Architectural style(s) | Inter-war Functionalist & Moderne |
| Owner | Victorian Department of Education |
| Official name: MacRobertson Girls' High School | |
| Type | Built |
| Criteria | Architectural, historic and social significance |
| Designated | 23 May 1998 |
| Reference no. | 2961 |
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The MacRobertson Girls’ High School buildings are a group of special buildings. They are located in South Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. These buildings are part of the Mac.Robertson Girls' High School. This school is just for girls.
The school and its campus are named after Sir Michael Macpherson Robertson. He was a generous person who gave $100,000 to the state of Victoria. About $40,000 of that money was used to build this school.
Norman Seabrook designed the buildings. He was an architect from Seabrook and Fildes. He won a competition with his modern and practical design. The buildings were finished in 1934. This was during the 100th birthday celebrations of Victoria. The school buildings helped show new, modern architecture in Australia. They also helped the state recover after a tough economic time.
The buildings were added to the Victorian Heritage Register on May 23, 1998. This means they are important for their design, history, and social meaning in Victoria.
Contents
What the Buildings Look Like
The school was designed to be very practical. It has four different sections, or "wings." These wings are for different subjects like regular classrooms, science labs, art rooms, and cooking classes. This layout makes it easy to move between subjects. It also creates cool outdoor courtyard areas around the building.
The outside of the building looks like "interlocking blocks" of different heights. A tall clock tower stands out with white vertical stripes. The materials used were chosen to be useful and colourful. They used cream bricks, red steel windows, and dark blue shiny brick pillars. Inside, the colours were softer, like red, blue, yellow, green, and black. The floors were made of strong materials like linoleum in classrooms. Corridors had terracotta tiles, and stairs were made of a tough material called granolithic.
How the Design Was Influenced
Many people think that Norman Seabrook's design for MacRobertson Girls’ High School was inspired by another building. This was the Hilversum town hall in the Netherlands, designed by William Dudok. Both buildings use similar bricks and have interlocking shapes. They also have practical layouts, flat roofs, and a modern, industrial look inside.
The way the bricks are laid in both buildings makes them look very long and flat. Seabrook chose local cream-coloured bricks from Glen Iris. At that time, these bricks were not used much. Using cream bricks for the whole building was a new, modern idea. It even started a trend for many future buildings in Victoria.
Seabrook's Design Ideas
Seabrook had a very practical way of thinking about design. He believed that a building should look like what it is. For example, a school should look like a school. This idea helped him create the unique and useful design of the school. It had a big impact on Australian architecture.
MacRobertson Girls’ High School was the first modern school built in Victoria. Other schools at the time often looked like old castles or traditional Georgian homes. A famous architect named Robin Boyd called the building an "evolution of modern architecture" in Australia.
The different parts of the school building give it a good sense of size and balance. The bright red steel windows stand out against the blue brick pillars and cream bricks. This helps to break up the look of the building. Steel windows were not common in schools back then. They were seen as a modern and practical choice.
Seabrook also thought about the land around the school. He used native plants to match the dry, flat land of South Melbourne. The flagpole and clock tower were also important parts of his design. You can see them in many of Seabrook's later buildings too.
Gallery
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MacRobertson Girls' High School's courtyard
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The School's characteristic clock tower with two white rendered vertical strips
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Red hopper windows with blue tiled piers in between
See also
- Architecture of Melbourne
- Mac.Robertson Girls' High School
- Australian non-residential architectural styles
