Clifton Hill Primary School 

PRODUCTS

Nubrik in Chapel Red

Designed by Jackson Clements Burrows Architects (JCB), Clifton Hill Primary School’s new vertical campus is located on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country in Clifton Hill, Victoria. Following close engagement with school leadership and the Victorian School Building Authority, JCB set out to create a dynamic space that champions highly flexible and adaptable learning. This project has won a number of highly acclaimed awards including the 2024 AIA Victorian Architecture Awards in Educational Architecture and the AIA National Architecture Awards in Educational Architecture, and were highly commended at the 2024 Sustainability Awards for Education and Research.

Spanning three levels, the school accommodates a complex floor plan on what is a rather constrained site. Ground level features both communal and administrative areas, whilst levels one and two include flexible teaching spaces with breakout areas to suit a variety of learning styles. Circulation was central to the design, creating clarity and function throughout. Each space opens onto a large communal hallway to create ‘circulation zones’ that also hold offices, lockers, and more informal breakout areas. The third level serves as an open-air rooftop playground with a solar panel pergola to generate the school’s power. 

“The building’s facade features articulated bricks from Nubrik in Chapel Red with fixed external louvres that offer sun protection and privacy without blocking views from the inside.”

With sustainability at the forefront of the design, Clifton Hill Primary School’s new campus is Passivhaus Certified and constructed with hybrid mass timber, allowing for lower carbon emissions, maintenance and operational costs. 

Bricks were also utilised for this very reason. The building’s facade features articulated bricks from Nubrik in Chapel Red with fixed external louvres that offer sun protection and privacy without blocking views from the inside. Dry pressed and locally produced in Brickworks’ Melbourne Wollert Plant, this textured red brick responds to the neighbouring context and the building’s orientation to the west and north. Nubrik are also classified as a healthy building material, Red List Free and holding a DECLARE Label. 

Alluding to Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar, the second and third levels feature bricks that trace a subtle caterpillar-like line around the corner onto South Terrace. This allows the scale of the building’s openings to increase, absorbing the northern sun and park views for vertical circulation. The controlled geometry and rhythmic turning out of the bricks reference the ornate polychromatic brickwork of the suburb’s colonial past.