Umhlanga College transformed with Corobrik brickwork

However, as the school began to flourish and grew rapidly, parents from the surrounding suburbs asked that further facilities be added to accommodate older children, extending learners stays at the school.

Architect Trish Emmett says that the existing building on the property was the cane cutters' single quarters. Transforming this historic building into a modern learning facility has been an exciting challenge.

The original face brick building with its distinctive brick columns set the tone and the original old dining hall with its wrap around verandahs was linked with new buildings that perfectly complemented them.

Matching products

The brickwork was dictated by builders of old and the modern-day architect's job was to select a product that matched as closely as possible. Corobrik's Firelight Satin was the perfect choice together with Corobrik's Imperial non-face bricks which formed the basis for the contrasting plastered sections of the buildings.

Corobrik's director of sales, Allin Dangers, said that Firelight Satin had both practical and aesthetic qualities that make it a good match. "Durable face bricks possess a high degree of size, shape uniformity and the rich terracotta colour of the chosen face bricks have worked well with the earth tones and natural surrounds. It is a feature of clay brick that it harmonises with all environments, fauna and flora and in this instance has taken the historic building's ambience forward into the present day built environment in a seamless way."

From the outset, says Emmett, sustainable building methods and design were priorities, again making environmentally friendly clay brick a natural fit.

Throughout there has been a master plan for building which centred on the use of clay brick. The only changes have been made to roofs as the original clay tiles were difficult to source as they are no longer made and are extremely expensive. Instead, she used double pitched roofs that are designed to optimise light as do large well positioned windows which have light shelves and grids to bounce light into the classrooms.

Multi-purpose hall

Once the main block was completed in 2007, Umhlanga College embarked on the construction of a bespoke multi-purpose hall. The design spec indicated that it had to blend with the existing buildings and also meld with distinctive features such as the open-air amphitheatre and a 6m wide paved street on to which the media and audio visual centre, science laboratory, cutting edge IT centre, design and technology centre and music, art and drama rooms open out.

The iconic hall that looks back towards the amphitheatre and out over the school sports fields. It includes a substantial stage, a sprung floor, practice rooms for music and ballet and highly sophisticated acoustics which have resulted in the incorporation of distinctive fins into the design.

At this point, the high school is just 40% complete. Construction of the second phase of the high school is expected to begin in 2015 with the completed facility expected to be fully functional by 2017.