Santa Sophia Catholic College

Santa Sophia Catholic College is a multi-storey co-education school aiming to provide diverse and collaborative learning environments for its students. With education changing significantly over the years, Santa Sophia has incorporated a larger focus on interactive school activities to encourage creativity and engagement. LPA is immensely proud to be a part of delivering one of Australia’s leading education facilities.

The school was completed relatively quickly based on its size and the challenges faced during the pandemic. Our early engagement from the concept stage allowed us to coordinate the lighting requirements smoothly with Class Electrical, BVN architects and the Buildcorp team. LPA attended weekly meetings with the key partners involved to discuss and manage the project’s main elements. We were involved throughout the design and tender phase through to the coordination stage to avoid conflict with the other services. It was paramount to have strong communication with our partners to ensure the project ran efficiently and met the design objectives.

The building zones consist of four to six levels that are connected by podiums including interactive play elements appropriate for the different student age groups. Working alongside BVN and Buildcorp, we designed and provided calculations for the school’s five building zones and all exterior areas.

The majority of the drawings and calculations were completed in the first few months. Our design team made several design revisions to achieve the client’s final results. This included adjusting the design layout to accommodate the fire, sound, AV and AC services in the buildings. During the process of the project, we also made minor adjustments to a few elements in the typical classrooms and exterior layouts due to site constraints.

We selected products from our standard LPA range and worked with select manufacturers to create custom light fixtures meeting the design intent.

All recessed linear extrusions were custom-made with a finished detailed end cover to suit a suspended floating acoustic panel ceiling design. They were cut to custom lengths to accommodate the various classroom sizes. These were fitted with a German-made PMMA linear roll continuous diffuser, the outcome provides soft, low-glare illumination without visible joins. The light quality specified by the client for the learning areas was daylight CCT 5500K light colour, this temperature helps with student alertness and improves their general learning environment.

LPA’s comprehensive experience in the education sector and our ability to work with key partners and suppliers allowed us to deliver an immersive and collaborative school learning environment for the staff and students to use and enjoy.

Check out Buildcorp’s video on the project:

• 360 Degree Virtual Tour
• Buildcorp’s Digital Video Milestones