A Research Manual to Support Best Practice in an Urban Context.
What is a Vertical School?
A vertical school is a multi-storey school design.
As opposed to a land-intensive traditional horizontal campus, the vertical school provides a condensed development model with often a singular building between 5 to 17 storeys in height.
The planning of vertical schools frequently locates outdoor spaces on upper levels of the building and deploys atriums to connect multiple floors.
The construction methods, materials and servicing of vertical schools are similar to those of a high-rise office building, often deploying commercial-grade facades and lift cores.
The vertical school is a new type of marketed development commissioned across Australia's mainland states. While a recent phenomenon in the Australian context, multi-storey schools commonly appear in dense city centres such as New York, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
The emergence of vertical schools in city centres is due to land economics and tight site restrictions requiring taller developments to facilitate accommodation briefs that include teaching and administrative and recreational facilities.