Fiona Young, Sydney Studio Director for Hayball, spoke to SCHWARTZWILLIAMS about her work designing innovative education spaces.
Fiona Young, Sydney Studio Director for Hayball, spoke to SCHWARTZWILLIAMS about the power of a good teacher, and about designing education spaces that incorporate community and allow student voices to be heard.
What made you decide to become an architect?
When I was at school in Dunedin on New Zealand’s South Island, my sixth form geography teacher came up to me one day and asked if I’d ever thought about being an architect. I hadn’t, until that moment. It was like something clicked - he got me involved in work experience and that was it.
What is the most important factor to consider when designing spaces for learning?
Understanding a school’s culture and pedagogy is vital when designing spaces for learning. This allows us to ensure that what we’re designing supports, rather than hinders the ability of the teachers and students to teach and learn in different ways, now and into the future.
It’s also about ensuring that student voice is represented in the design process, as ultimately, this is the audience who we want to engage in learning.
I understand a lot of your work combines learning spaces with public institutions like museums and libraries. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
I think my background as an exhibition designer has shaped me as an architect in that I learnt to design the way people experience an exhibition or space, starting from a deep understanding of objects and the stories curators want to convey through those objects, in a space.
To a certain degree this translates to what I do now because I am able to think about how different users will experience schools. As a result, the pedagogy and culture of learning institutions function as the objects and stories at the heart of the design, and are an inherent part of the final result.
As learning isn’t limited to schools but is indeed something that continues throughout our lives, there’s a natural inclination to design cultural institutions and their curated exhibitions with learning in mind. The two are perfectly complementary and subsequently, there are often opportunities for translational thinking between the two typologies.
With Australian cities becoming more densely populated, what are your thoughts on high-rise schools?
I think there is a lot of sense in high-rise schools from a practical perspective given the ever-increasing population and spatial constraints of our cities.
There are some exciting possibilities around designing schools as the heart of communities, and how high-rise schools in urban areas, such as Hayball’s South Melbourne Primary School, have the potential to integrate with surrounding community and cultural buildings such as swimming pools and libraries, and itself be a place that invites learning from both students and the wider community.
Where do you live now?
I live in Darlington, which is situated on the fringe of Sydney University, right next to Redfern. The location is great. It’s incredibly convenient without being built up or overly congested.
Where would you live if you could live anywhere in the world?
There are so many places that I would love to live in and experience in some way, and I’m lucky in that I’ve had the chance to live in New Zealand where I grew up, Dublin where I worked for 18 months, California, Hong Kong and now Sydney where I currently live.
If I were still able to access the lifestyle aspects I currently enjoy in Sydney – work, culture, travel – while living in Wanaka in the South Island of New Zealand, then that’s where I’d live to soak up the fresh air and mountain views.
Read more about architects:
First sod turned on vertical high school in inner Melbourne
Hayball school recognised as best Future Project at World Architecture Festival