The new schools in Manukau's Flat Bush development seem to have been inspired by American School design. The two largest school Mission Heights School and Ormiston Senior College are a new style for School buildings. Unlike traditional New Zealand schools which are made up of several small buildings that are used as class rooms and have separate library and hall facilities, these new schools facilities and class rooms are predominately housed by one large buildings. One could argue that Americans design and build their schools in this manner because land is much more scarce there. So the question is why did the developers decide to build Mission Heights School and Ormiston Senior College in the same manner? In my personal opinion, the school have been built like this in Flat Bush in order to maximize land area by having a 2 to 3 storey high building that houses all the class rooms and other in door facilities and then offering student larger fields and court areas that would otherwise have been cover by a classroom if it had been built in the same traditional New Zealand School style.
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Source: American Institute of Architects, 2011 New Wadena High School that will replace the old school that had similar building design that was destroyed by a tornado last year. If you compare this to the building below of Ormiston in New Zealand you can see the similarities in building styles and size. |
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Source: Layco, 2011 Personal Photos Ormiston Senior College finished not yet operative. Its building style and size is inspired by high schools in America. |
Below are photos showing the scale of these new schools. From personal observation I believe they are large because they must cater to a large housing development population catchment, which has been predominately targeted towards families, which 3 to 4 bedroom detached houses surrounding the schools.
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Source: Layco, 2011 Personal Photos Only one portion of the new school building |
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Source: Layco, 2011 Personal Photos Streetscape outside Ormiston main entrance for pedestrians |
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Source: Layco, 2011 Personal Photos Sreet that is being used as Ormiston's main entrance for foot traffic. |
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Source: Layco, 2011 Personal Photos Part of Mission Height's Schooling facilities |
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Source: Layco, 2011 Personal Photos Photo showing the lenght of Mission Heights Schools |
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Source: Layco, 2011 Personal Photos On the Southern end of the Mission Height School building is the Primary School as you move up the hill it is Mission Heights Intermediate School. This means children only have to move buildings after primary school not whole locations as they normally do. |
It’s also interesting to note how Ormiston Senior College has been built in bike parks in an accessible area to try and encourage students to bike to school. It’s good to see that new schools are being built to support sustainable methods of transport.
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Source: Layco, 2011 Personal Photos The railings shown in the photo are for bike parking on the main street entrance for Ormiston. There are a number of them, this indicates that developers were thinking about ways of encouraging sustainable travel means before the school was even operative. |
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Source: Layco, 2011 Personal Photos Ormiston has an impressive range of sporting facilities that cover a large proportion of the School's land not covered by the building. |
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Source: Layco, 2011 Personal Photos Locals already making use of the school's sporting facilities |
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