St George College Hospitality Trade Training Centre, Mile End

School’s out, food’s in!

The Federal Government’s Trade Training Centres in Schools program with $2.5 billion spent over 10 years enabled secondary students to access vocational education through Trade Training Centres. A component of the Government’s Education Revolution program announced in 2009, aimed to increase the proportion of students achieving Year 12 or an equivalent qualification and help address skill shortages in traditional trades and emerging industries. Schools applied for funding to build new facilities or upgrade existing trade or vocational education and training facilities. St George College secured the funding under the scheme to develop its hospitality industry training centre at Mile End. The design challenged the Tectvs team to create a newly built identity for the school that would complement the existing structures on site.

Tectvs as master-planner and Architect for St George College had already designed a number of new facilities, including an e-learning centre, visual arts centre and library. Its intimate knowledge of the workings of the school enabled Tectvs to deliver the training centre while preserving valuable ground-level campus space. The centre is an extrapolation of a full-blown commercial kitchen that enables demonstration and instruction for sixteen students at a time. 

In raising the structure off-ground, Tectvs allowed the school to maintain the play area in an already restricted site, and at the same time contribute to the built identity of the Hospitality Trade Training centre. The project, fast-tracked to a tight budget, integrated another learning module with the master plan. The result was a modern, stylish, flexible learning space that promoted the visibility of the training process.