St Mary's College, Riverside Precinct

St Mary’s College was established in 1863 by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy whose tradition, ethos and spirituality centred around the notion of community, which are enmeshed in every fibre of the school’s being. St Mary’s, part of the Ipswich Heritage Trail, is located on a rise overlooking the Bremer River and is a prominent landmark in the city’s landscape. The physical and historical heart of the school is Mercy House, a State Heritage listed former convent completed in 1884.

The new master plan for the site set out to restore Mercy House and celebrate this “Grand Old Lady” as the jewel in the crown of the campus, whilst the new Riverside Precinct buildings (containing science and art facilities) skirt the formal geometry of the convent in a curvilinear embrace, also echoing the undulating topography of the site, the river and mountainous distant horizon.

The new buildings are arranged and scaled to maintain protected views to and from the convent, and their form and fabric compliment but do not compete with Mercy House. The neutral colour and material palette of the generous western verandahs of the Riverside Precinct sit humbly in their context with the intention that the students bring colour and vivacity to this fluid movement corridor. Fine filaments of colour weave their way through the new buildings, alluding to the colour spectrum as an accessible commonality between the disciplines of art and science. The earthy colouring of the sunscreen elements to the river sit harmoniously atop the treed slope and form a dappled foreground to the convent when viewed from afar.