Case study · Education
Gymea North Public School
Multisensory design across library and classroom zones, built for neurotypical and neurodiverse learners alike, with a sealed biophilic water feature and planting guidance.
Project details
- Client
- Gymea North Public School
- Location
- Gymea, NSW
- Sector
- Education
- Valeo Technology role
- Multisensory design: soundscaping and its commissioning, a sealed biophilic water feature and planting guidance
- Spaces
- Library and classroom zones for neurotypical and neurodiverse learners
- Project partners
- Moodsonic
The challenge
Design the room, not the child
A classroom asks a great deal of a child’s attention, and more again of a child with sensory sensitivities.
The brief was to make the environment more responsive to different activities and sensory needs, designing a room that asks less adaptation of a child, across spaces that shift between quiet focus and group work through the day.
The approach
Activity-based zones, and a sense of place
Focus areas use calming natural soundscapes that reduce speech intelligibility, the specific quality that makes nearby conversation hard to work through. Collaboration areas use content that supports energy without adding to the noise. Because the environment is adaptive rather than fixed, staff can change the character of a space when a group needs settling or lifting.
Alongside the soundscaping, a sealed biophilic water feature and planting guidance extend the same intent into what the room looks and feels like.
Place
The room already had a story
The wall at the library entry carries painted panels of local freshwater life: platypus, eel, turtle, yabby. Children pass them on the way in.
Water sounds do a specific acoustic job in a library, because broadband, continuous content softens the voices that carry across an open room. Here they also do a second job, because the sound and the wall are describing the same place. That pairing was not a coincidence, and it is the difference between installing audio in a room and designing sound for a particular one.
The artwork is the school’s. We designed the sound that sits alongside it.
Outcome
“The students and teachers love the soundscaping. It’s really helped invigorate the different spaces.”
Michael Brown, Deputy Principal, Gymea North Public School