Curious[c]ity: Turning Poetic Fictions into Powerful Facts

This exhibition presents the architecture of McBride Charles Ryan (MCR) for Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School (PEGS). It includes drawings, models, photographs and archival material from past and present projects, revealing their design concepts, process and resolution. The exhibition will be open for public viewing during the day with an opening night and other scheduled events.

MCR has worked with PEGS at their Keilor East and Essendon campuses for over eighteen years, developing a series of projects that rethink the educational campus as a kind of wondrous mini-city. The exhibition is in part, a celebration of the body of work and unique collaborative partnership between MCR and PEGS. It is also a musing on the role of architecture in education – how buildings can reinforce a pedagogical model with both functional learning environments (fact) and narratives that spark curiosity in our future generation (fiction).

Our earliest curiosities are formed at school. Whether in the classroom or schoolyard, it is in this environment that we first learn that you could fit over a million planet Earths inside the Sun; that sound travels via invisible waves through the air; and that plants capture light and carbon dioxide and convert them into matter for growth and the air we breathe.

From this understanding derives MCR’s architecture for PEGS. The exhibition explores how creative environments are critical in shaping the future legacy of design while showcasing the work of MCR, an Australian architectural practice.