The new Cultural Centre at Santa Maria College in Perth establishes a vibrant cultural heart for the campus and marks the first major project delivered under the school’s recent masterplan. Designed by Architectus, the landmark building provides a professional-level theatre environment that supports learning, creating, rehearsing and performing for all students. It recognises that participation in the arts is fundamental to building confidence, creative problem-solving and leadership skills, giving students opportunities to step onto the stage, find their voice and develop capabilities that will support them well beyond their school years.

The Cultural Centre is designed to meet both current and future needs of the College. At its core is a 642-seat theatre equipped with professional-grade technical infrastructure, including lighting bars, follow spot platforms and rigging hardware that enable a fully immersive theatre experience and exposure to industry-standard skills. Complementing the main theatre are a series of multifunctional, interdisciplinary spaces: a dance studio with a fully sprung floor, a flexible 140-seat black box theatre, a green room that doubles as a classroom and a range of back-of-house areas. Together these spaces have been carefully planned for maximum flexibility as settings for teaching, gathering and performance. Beyond student productions, music concerts, public speaking and assemblies, the Cultural Centre also supports staff, parent and alumni events.

The building is set into the College’s steeply sloping grounds. Its two-level form has a single-pitch roof and steps down the hill to achieve a modest profile to neighbouring homes to the south, while presenting a triple-height connection to the existing campus buildings on the north. Located behind the historic McAuley building, the Cultural Centre draws inspiration from the school’s village-like campus character. Sweeping colonnades of pumice-pigmented precast concrete reference the existing verandahs and covered walkways, while two terracotta-toned theatre volumes in ribbed aluminium recall both the folds of a theatre curtain and the surrounding terracotta roof tiles.

The project is the first major building realised under a campus masterplan that introduces a new east-west pedestrian axis along the southern edge of the site. Architectus won a design competition in 2021 to deliver the Cultural Centre, which now sets the tone for future College development. The building anchors a new everyday circulation route through the campus – a “Knowledge Walk” that students and staff will move along as part of daily life – becoming a place to pass through as much as to visit, while stitching together the school’s history, its current activities and its future growth. Internally, the main theatre is finished with warm timber and detailed brass handrails to lend a sense of occasion to both everyday use and major performances.

Public art is integrated into the entrance and circulation spaces, created by Santa Maria College alumna Ellen Norrish. Drawing on the school’s archives and local stories, and developed in consultation with a First Nations representative, her hand-drawn studies of historical and landscape objects have been translated into delicate etchings that trace their way along key movement routes and reveal aspects of the College’s history over the decades.