Adelaide High School Hive Building
Adelaide High School is a significant site in terms of the history of our state education, it’s location within the Park Lands and State Heritage listing. The original buildings were designed in 1940 and built in 1951, recognised nationally as significant modernist architecture. The challenge for the school has been to provide contemporary learning within this historic environment. The opportunity for the Hive Building was to create a new central hub for the school, forming not only a social destination for students, but also offering spaces that encourage different ways students can learn and interact. The first building on the campus to engage with the Park Lands, the Hive Building invites the landscape to become part of the everyday student learning experience.
The Hive Building does not seek to look the same as the historic brick buildings but to be a counterpoint to them, expressing a new future for the school where the ability to adapt, experiment and encourage independent learning is at the forefront. The new terraced student veranda and cafe adjacent the Park Lands activates and signifies that this is no longer the back of the school. The Hive Building is the new face to community life and represents the school’s entrepreneurial mindset and contemporary pedagogy.