The legacy of Peter Corrigan and Maggie Edmond at RMIT is most honoured in Building 8, a patterned extravaganza overlooking Swanston Street. This blue threshold transitions students from the main foyer into a calming wellbeing sensory space.
This carpeted otherworldly geometry shifts visitors from an overthinking headspace into a grounded heart space. Meticulous craftsmanship, reminiscent of master boat-building, features cushion piping-like rope edging and ergonomic stainless-steel planters. Merging a functional workspace with a garden in the sky retreat, the area provides a soothing, sensory respite for those seeking counselling and quiet reflection.
Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung Country
Melbourne CBD, VIC
Built by Shape
Photographed Martina Gemmola
The Contemporary Library reimagines a compartmentalized 1970s educational wing into a singular, university-style “Curiosity Centre.” This restoration stitches modern sophistication into the existing brick fabric, balancing technical acoustic rigor with architectural whimsy.
The design celebrates the building’s industrial skeleton, highlighting exposed steel trusses in high-gloss green while drawing the “outside in” by echoing the site’s heritage fretwork and terracotta rooflines. Eschewing literal branding, the palette uses plush blue and terracotta seating to provide a nuanced complement to the school’s uniforms. This earthy base is punctuated by playful interventions, such as light pink door frames against heavy original brickwork.
At the space’s heart, a fireplace clad in biscuit-brown tiles evokes an heirloom feel, while a sharp, jazzy blue grout ensures the heritage feels fresh, not frozen. By honoring robust historical bones through a contemporary lens, the library becomes a vibrant, forward-looking hub for learning.
Bunurong/Boonwurrung Country
Berwick, VIC
Built by Jointly
Photographed Martina Gemmola
Taking inspiration from its urban environment, Bennetts student accommodation brings youthful energy to the heart of Melbourne.
With 35 units planned across 9 stories, the building makes the most of its corner location by activating both street frontages, creating vibrant spaces for students to study, cook, and socialise. The ground level features a cozy outdoor area, while the first-floor balcony terrace offers a premium spot for casual gatherings and enjoy the laneway. Large windows at ground and terrace levels keep the connection to the street alive, bringing plenty of natural light and ventilation into the building.
Segueing from gold to soft creams and lively peaches, Bennetts is a fun, modern twist on Melbourne’s Deco-era charm: a welcoming space where students can feel right at home. Key to the success of this project is the use of Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) to reduce carbon footprint in construction.
Wurundjeri Country
Melbourne CBD
With deep roots in Carlton’s Italian heritage, Bouverie brings the neighbourhood’s vibrant character to life, modelling sustainability and community.
Wherever you are in the world, student accommodation exudes a distinct vibe which goes beyond cultural diversity – it’s also about the mix of memories, dreams, and future plans each resident brings. Wes Anderson’s approach to subject and style aligns perfectly with the layered experience of student living. His films are a welcoming window into worlds where a shared sense of childhood nostalgia and adulthood curiosity can flourish. Inspired by this connection, we created warm environments full of retro colours and neat, symmetrical details.
The design is all about bringing people together. The ground floor opens up to the street, blending seamlessly with laneways. Upstairs, a party mezzanine offers a lively social space, while the solar array on the roof reinforces the building’s commitment to green energy. This isn’t just a place to stay—it’s a space where students can make lasting memories, share experiences, and enjoy the best of Carlton’s past and future.
Bouverie features Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT), a carbon-neutral material that cuts its footprint by up to 50%, compared to traditional materials. Creating minimal waste during construction, it is an environmentally-friendly choice all around.
Wurundjeri Country
Carlton, VIC
Starting Construction mid 2026
Parallel Play is a joyful union of all generations enjoying activities side-by-side within our lush rewilded garden oasis. The generosity of this urban bushscape is a central feature for the six intimate & distinctive communities that will call this place home.
A beautiful collaboration between WOWOWA and DKO Architects explore a design vision celebrating of diversity, curiosity, character and connection. DKO and WOWOWA have collaborated as a true partnership to create this robust pumping space for humans. By making considered variations to the previous scheme and increasing connections to the wider Zetland community, our proposal sees the creation of a centralised Rewilded Oasis.
Designing for resilience, our scheme celebrates wind, water and natural energy.
Gadigal of the Eora and Dharug Nation
Sydney, NSW
WOWOWA x DKO in collaboration with Traditional Owner B of hardyhardy & Oculus
The new design was developed through the lens of the site’s history and elders’ consultations, to develop a design that explores the geology, waterways and native birds that are emended elements of the site that WOWOWA aim to build up further as education narratives at the school whilst speaking to the larger civic identity.
On the ground level of the new three storey building, sits the community hub, allowing for the opportunity to expand out and connect the waterways landscape design. A music space along with the opportunity to function as a concert rehearsal and a presentation space facing the community hub.
Levels One and Two are largely made up of the new learning environments. Accessibility and inclusion are a key focus in terms of providing equal access throughout the school with the new lift, along with the design of the all-gender toilets to cater to student wellbeing and inclusion.
The spatial arrangement of these areas have been designed in consultation with the school in a flexible arrangement to incorporate the existing open plan collaborative pedagogy. The new design also features three consult rooms (withdrawal, consult and sensory) to cater to the school’s need for group work, teacher aid and sensory needs.
Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country
Richmond, VIC
Crumpler Adelaide store papped!
Similar to the nostalgic urban feast that is our Melbourne fit-out, this street party sees a lavender park bench and table, a bike rack table and local bin inspired point-of-sale motif to set a vibe.
Chunky signature Crumpler stripes for the backdrop for an epic bag hang with the logo mural graphic splayed happily across the floor.
Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains
Adelaide, SA
Photography: Tim Fenby
The project brief involved the renovation of two amenity blocks at Mossgiel Park Primary School. Aside from generally upgrading the facilities across both blocks, the school wanted the new amenities to have a welcoming feel, as the principal was aware of younger students who were too intimidated to use the school bathrooms. WOWOWA took these concerns on board and focused on improving the layout of the facilities to create a private yet inviting entry sequence, with minimal touchpoints, as well as selecting materials that were durable and easy to clean. The vinyl was a design opportunity to bring an element of playfulness into a utilitarian space.
Inspiration was found in school’s star logo – which is projected and reflected across the floors and walls.
The colours play-off the school’s blue logo and uniforms, with complementary purple and yellow to define the shared washbasin area from the cubicle spaces. This small school project, sought to create an accessible, safe, and positive space for students to use each day – striving to become the star-student of all amenity projects.
Bunurong & Boonwurrung Country
Endeavour Hills, VIC
Bringing the streets of Melbourne inside. When no brand is more Melbourne than Crumpler, it seems only right to pull the bluestone street paving in the front door and allow the artfully painted aqua Crumpler man mural, painted by Georgia Anne Harvey, dance along the newly painted blue facade and move inward up all along the ceiling.
Everything about this vibrant transformation feels fresh and nostalgic for the brands origin story days as badass bike couriers.
The display furniture and point of sale reference Melbourne’s street furniture, lionizing the gritty urban ornamentation of the place we call home. Scaffolding is wrapped in quintessentially Crumpler orange fabric, made locally in Fitzroy, like a mini Christo, to frame mirrors that reflect and reinforce the decidedly exterior interior experience.
Wonder and delight are coupled with a comforting familiarity – it’s a street party and everyone is invited.
Wurundjeri Country
Bourke Street Melbourne, VIC
Photography: Tom Blachford
The Coburg West Primary School works involves the refurbishment of eight existing classrooms across two levels. The previous configuration was setup as a large open learning space where four class groups occupied each corner with a shared open space to the centre. However, the school found that this type of learning space did not suit their junior student cohort.
The refurbishment works involved enclosing the larger area into four distinct learning spaces. Acoustic sliding doors accommodate connection between these distinct learning spaces, while also enabling them to be closed for more directed learning activities. The shared central space will now operates as an additional breakout space with a wet area for art or messy play activities.
The design has worked hard to achieve maximum change with a modest budget. Surface finishes were upgraded to give the spaces a refresh without significant demolition works. Learners have been central to the design, with new walls and acoustic doors prioritised to optimise the functionality of the space.
“Let me say, the new spaces are a hit with new parents on enrolment tours. As I walk them through from the Grade Prep classrooms into the new space, you just hear “WOW”. Principal of Coburg West Primary School
Boon Wurrung & Woi Wurrung Country
Coburg, VIC
Photography: John Gollings
Mezze is a Mediterranean banquet for Brunswick. With Passive House ambitions, Mezze is a 17m high mixed-use apartment building sited behind a glorious cream brick deco maternal health center that adorns Sydney Road. Setting a modestly scaled precedent for the newly rezoned industrial strip, Mezze aims to shine as a beacon of appropriate development with a robust visual language mixing old world glory with a contemporary best practice sustainability agenda.
Mezze will be Carbon Neutral, minimize site waste with prefabrication and have a solar structure crowning the roof top. As a built to rent development, this project will become a thought leadership piece as well as a beautiful place to live.
Boon Wurrung
Brunswick, VIC
Sited on Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung Country, this Stage 3 Victoria School Building Authority (VSBA) project at Auburn High School (AHS) is a culturally attuned senior hub, providing a vivid, inspired range of learning and social environments.
Conceptually grounded in its dramatic landscape, First Nations heritage and industrial history, this building supports the pedagogical goals of staff within, while aspiring to educate in its own quiet way.
Sitting on the northwest corner of a former brick quarry and replacing a dilapidated building, its two-storey form steps down into the steep slope, each floor oriented along natural levels to create a distinctly zoned experience. All excavated rocks now feature in the garden, amid native grasses and Golden Wattle trees.
Its considerate linear profile meets the street with a colonnade of ochre masonry columns, establishing civic weight under a sharp, recognisably Australian, skillion roof. A curved mass signals the arrival, featuring bricks arranged in a tonal gradient, emulating striations in the adjacent cliff face.
The resourcefully designed new AHS building is visibly made from and for its place, suggesting an empathetic way forward for contemporary Australian educational facilities.
Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung Country
Hawthorn East, VIC
Photography: Martina Gemmola
The new facility reflects the schools desire to offer students more opportunities to engage in project-based learning and new technologies, better equipping them for the future economy.
The design stitches together the 3 existing buildings as a whole and de-clutters the existing internal spaces, creating better visual connections between newly created spaces and to the surrounding external courtyards. The plan is divided into programmatic bands, instruction, fabrication and collaboration, to reflect and reinforce the new pedagogy.
The new ‘Fab-Lab’ incorporates collaborative workspace, specialist manufacturing labs and a new civic hub. The Advanced Manufacturing/Precious Plastics Space is a dedicated industry participation space where local manufacturing groups teach and work directly with students.
The internal acoustic lining material is fabricated from recycled PET materials and is made up of over 80,000 recycled 500mm PET bottles, plastics from the school will now be collected and utilized as material for fabrication with a suite of plastics fabrication machinery and reused as filament for their 3D printing machines.
Boon Wurrung & Woi Wurrung
Hampton Park, VIC
WOWOWA joins forces with 14 other Melbourne architects to become A New Normal ambassador to visualize a pathway for Melbourne to become a regenerative self-sufficient city by 2030. This initiative was launched at NGV’s Melbourne Design Week as a roof top immersive exhibition with talks & workshops to unpack how this $100 billion transformation that pays for itself in 10 years could be brought to life. It imagined a city powered entirely by renewable energy; a city with an unlimited supply of water; a city that sends zero waste to landfill.
WOWOWA’s contribution was to couple public pools with Anaerobic Digesters, converting food waste from the local community into bio fuel to heat these facilities. Our speculative project chose Fitzroy Swimming Pool with a render showing locals dropping off their waste as well as the trucks delivering the 10 tones required. Housed within the tower are two large tanks, stacked to minimise its footprint, while also celebrating this new industrial form on the suburban streetscape.
For Melbourne Design Week we partnered with 6 Degrees and film maker Non Studio on a short but visceral film celebrating the digester & the food it consumes that would otherwise go to landfill.
Naarm / Melbourne
Collaborators: Clare Cousins, Dreamer, Edition Office, FKA, Finding Infinity, Foolscap, Greenaway Architects, Greenshoot Consulting, Grimshaw, HA, Hassell, JWA, Kennedy Nolan, NMBW, Openworks, 6 Degrees, Thomas Supple, Ash Keating, Non Studio
WOWOWA completed the Masterplan for the University of Melbourne’s South Lawn Car Park which explores various opportunities through four stages over a 5 year period as well as outlining the key heritage, technical, logistic and compliance challenges of transforming the Car Park.
The South Lawn and Car Park is on the Heritage Victoria Register H1004. The Car Park is also identified in the Melbourne Planning Scheme Heritage Overlay, HO342.
Developing the Masterplan involved close examination of a Conservation Management Plan which was prepared in 2011 by Lovell Chen Architects & Heritage Consultants.
We proposed the concept of the ‘Living Lab; a place for student engagement through active workshops and studios. The Living Lab provides an opportunity for students and researchers to engage and collaborate with cultural and industry partners from outside of the University through installations, events, talks and workshops. The Car Park can become a ‘mixing chamber’ of experimentation and demonstration.
Boon Wurrung & Woi Wurrung
Parkville, VIC
Competition Won 2018
This jazzy Tschumi-esk gym refurb is Australian adaptive reuse as it’s finest – both gloriously punching above it’s weight & dirt cheap.
The project was to line a dilapidated double basketball gym that was devilishly cold in winter & excessively loud with two games on.
Celebrating the school’s colours, WOWOWA highlighted the existing structure in a red, to create a beautifully fine web appears across the vaulted volume.
This no scarlet portal frame was coupled with grey acoustic material that was both functional and contributed to the graphic feast running alongside the skylights.
A ginormous curtain now separates the courts & a thermal upgrade was actioned. Industrial size fans circulate the air and a full tech upgrade was implemented to increase the amenity of the space.
Overall, a slam dunk.
Boon Wurrung & Woi Wurrung Country
Hampton Park
Photography: John Gollings
The Hampton Park Secondary School Senior School has been developed to address the changing pedagogical approaches to teaching and learning identified by HPSC. As the first stage of the Hampton Park Secondary School Masterplan, the Senior School Project begins the building works to the school, cementing the move towards a subschool model.
In this project, the existing Small Gym is converted into a Senior Learning School, facilitating VCE and VCAL learning, GPC’s and breakout learning spaces for student led independent study. Among other outcomes, the facility will promote student engagement and focus on enhancing the sense of community within the Senior subschool and throughout the entire school.
Boon Wurrung & Woi Wurrung Country
Hampton Park
Perhaps nothing defines Melbourne and its people more than the Yarra River (Birrarung). Inspired by successful urban river swimming projects globally and here at home, Yarra Pools is a community-led proposal to re-introduce recreation and water-play to the lower Yarra and, in doing so, to transform an under used section of the iconic river’s northern bank into a thriving community facility.
This riverside precinct will be active and vibrant and accessible to all. Bringing people a perspective of the river not seen since the middle of last century. The global movement towards reviving urban river swimming and the growing demand for healthy waterways have gone hand-in-hand.
Boon Wurrung & Woi Wurrung
A co-created design between WOWOWA & Yarra Pools
Thanks to NGV & Melbourne Design Week for their generous support moving the project forward for #melbdesignhk
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“Together with community not-for-profit Yarra Swim Co, WOWOWA designed the Yarra Pool, a speculative project that features in this year’s Melbourne Design Week. The pool combines lap lanes with surrounding wetlands designed as a catalyst to clean up the waterway. The ongoing project has been built on consultation, says Woodward; “We spoke with Koorie Heritage Trust and a variety of traditional owners and key stakeholders to arrive at a more natural space without hard edges.”
How realistic is the project? “That’s maybe the wrong question,” says Woodward. The right question is ‘Who now is going to become the champion? Who has the agency to make the pool happen? It’s about a collective effort from political to a grassroots level.” THE AGE Jan 26 2019
The University High School North Terrace project is the implementation of the first stage of our University High School Masterplan.
The opportunity to develop the northern edge of the campus was identified as part of a series of smaller scale interventions looking specifically at the space between buildings.
The design is centered around a series of semi-circle brick seats that transform an underutilised section of the school into a flexible outdoor teaching and learning environment.
It is a combination of passive lounging and informal learning spaces that incorporates a new DDA access ramp to the front door of the school. In and around the seating the introduction of dense Indigenous planting forms part of a larger campus wide landscape rejuvenation project.
Boon Wurrung & Woi Wurrung
Parkville, VIC
Photographer: Ari Hatzis
The Australian Ugliness pays homage to modernist architect Robin Boyd (1919–1971) and his book of the same name, while exploring the ethics and aesthetics of our nation today. The three-channel video installation by Australian Artist Eugenia Lim brings forward a female, performative and Asian-Australian perspective to the screens and spaces of Australia. With visual poetry, pathos and wit, this is Australia rendered both familiar and strange, a country at once confident and ever-anxious.
The TAU installation design is by WOWOWA who proposed a gold and yellow reinterpretation of Robin Boyd’s Neptune’s Fishbowl (1970) to house Eugenia’s work. With its unorthodox construction methods and utopian geodesic structure, Neptune’s Fishbowl is simultaneously ambitious, democratic and optimistic.
The Dulux Gallery, Ground Floor Melbourne School of Design Building
23 July–25 August 2018
Full list of Collaborators over at Open House Melbourne
Photographer: Tom Ross