Melbourne
Australia
Tenseo Frontside 381: textile performance serving educational well-being
ABOUT
Melbourne – A Model for Quality of Life and Education
Located in southeastern Australia, Melbourne is the country’s second-largest urban area after Sydney. It is considered the cultural capital of Australia, thanks to its architecture, green spaces like the Royal Botanic Gardens, festivals, international cuisine, and major sporting events.
Melbourne is also a major academic hub, home to some of the country’s top educational institutions. Additionally, The Economist ranks it as the 4th most liveable city in the world, based on criteria including healthcare and education.
The Molesworth Street Campus – A School That Combines Education and Protection
In Melbourne, education is one of the city’s top priorities, and school infrastructure projects often reflect a broader vision for the well-being of its citizens from an early age. The new North Melbourne Primary School Molesworth Street Campus was designed as a multi-level vertical school to address space limitations in the inner city.
As part of the overall development, the design incorporated innovative and sun-safe outdoor play spaces to give students a healthy, inspiring, and urban-adapted learning environment. One of the most striking features of these spaces is the North Melbourne Primary School Circles, three circular shade structures positioned at different levels of the building.
Each vibrant and exciting shade structure consists of a large circular steel frame with a cable grid tensioned within the ring. The cables support 66 one-metre square printed textile panels, creating playful and dynamic shading effects for the children below.
Tenseo Frontside 381 – For Technical Design and Textile Creativity
The textile panels were made using Tenseo Frontside 381 from Serge Ferrari Group. Chosen for its printability, mechanical strength, and lightness, this material met the technical demands of the project: cable tensioning, custom printing, and visual comfort.
Used as a textile façade, Tenseo Frontside 381 provides thermal protection, blocking up to 81% of solar heat. It offers a unique solution to define or transform the identity of a building, thanks to its unlimited creative potential—through color variety, print options, or nighttime illumination.
Project Participants :
Architect: ARM Architecture
Engineering: Hansen Yunken
Fabrication & Installation: MakMax
Product: Tenseo Frontside 381
Surface Area: 350 m²
Copyright: MakMax
