Do girls need a different type of educational facility to boys? This is a question that Minx pondered when approached to design a new facility for the Marian Catholic Girls College in Sunshine West. Do we learn in the same way as the boys? Do we use space in the same way as boys? Are our education choices the same as those made by boys? The Design Warehouse at Marian College sought to answer some of these questions. The design solution was built around a courtyard of concrete

In 2011 Minx Architecture executed the “Irish Experiment”. Much like in the AFL, this venture has been largely successful. Cathal Dolan hails from a small rural town in on the east coast of Ireland called Carrickmacross. His name is apparently Irish for Charlie. Naturally part of the Irish Experiment involved working out how to speak Irish. For a year a big poster was hung in the office as a phonetic reminder of how to pronounce his name: CUH-HULL. He says it’s easy – just

In 2010 the Department of Education’s Knox Regeneration Scheme brought with it our first opportunity to design a Prep to Year 12 facility - Boronia College. The project spanned six years, two stages and totalled $25 million. This is the largest project that Minx Architecture has been involved with to date. Once again relationships between school, architect, builder and Department of Education were critical to the project, particularly given the timing of the stages, which h

Should schools be built to stimulate the economy? Having spent the majority of our working lives master planning and designing Victorian Government State Schools, for Minx it was difficult to witness the BER being rolled out. Schools desperate for funding, earmarked for capital works were told that their projects had been shelved and template designs were delivered thoughout the state with little regard to the Master Plans that they had in place. Minx limited their involvemen

The Global Financial Crisis and its aftermath, shone the spotlight on risk management. In the field of Education Architecture risk management and mitigation has taken a number of forms. A series of checklists have been introduced to ensure that our designs are safe Tender documentation is now required to include budget risk strategies and contractors must demonstrate their risk management credentials Spreadsheets have been formulated to ensure that all of the boxes are ticked