A Research Manual to Support Best Practice in an Urban Context.

City centres are becoming increasingly desirable residential locations for couples and young families, reversing a decades-old trend of population flight to outlying suburbs. As the populations of cities grow, large tracts of land which would support a traditional horizontal model of school design are no longer obtainable and are not financially viable. Therefore, for urban schools to accommodate the densification of cities, school design must transition from building outward to upward. 

Vertical School Architecture is a case study analysis of the spatial planning for secondary co-educational multi-storey school models in inner-urban areas across the globe. Land economics, tight site restrictions and large accommodation briefs require a school design more aligned with high-rise construction than its suburban predecessors, posing new opportunities and challenges for the facilitation of education, student wellbeing and city-making. In this thesis, the spatial organisation patterns that emerge in vertical school design precedents are documented and considered as a resource to assist the thinking of architects, school administrations and government officials when delivering school architecture of a similar type.

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