I was born in Papua New Guinea and the experience of living there until I was seven-and-a-half-years-old shaped me in ways that Cranbrook expanded upon positively. Thanks to a very creative older sister, I was already engaged with drawing, painting and making things when I walked through the New South Head Road gates for the first time. However, I was very fortunate that at Cranbrook there was an established culture of teaching and learning that valued creative visual arts.

It was at Cranbrook that I experienced the excellent art teaching of Mrs Ulm in the junior school and then Mr Gregory in the senior school. Both teachers equipped me with visually creative insights and technical skills that I have drawn upon throughout my post-school life. I retain many strong memories from eleven years of schooling at Cranbrook.

One memory that comes back to me often is walking into an art class (in the now demolished Mansfield Building) and seeing my art teacher, Mr Richard Gregory, drawing a large format chalk illustration on the blackboard of a significant building from architectural history. I was struck by the three-dimensional quality of the drawing and at the same time I had a sense of inevitability that I could potentially do that kind of drawing too. That single memorable experience from Cranbrook often returns to me when I am doing a large-scale architectural drawing across a white board or digital screen.

In my current role I am a designer of complex built environments. Some people term it architecture, but
for me it more broadly encompasses architecture, landscape architecture and urban design. It is absolutely a collaborative art form, so any career highlight is intimately connected with the contributions of many others: my architectural colleagues, landscape architects, engineers, builders and clients. A recurring highlight for me is returning again and again to a favourite building that we realised together and experiencing how that building continues to get better with age. It’s like revisiting a friend.

Cranbrook’s emphasis on the creative visual arts inspired Luke Johnson when he was a student.

With completed buildings in Australia and Japan, I have these kinds of friends in some interesting places.
What motivates me in my work is creating built environments that connect with their specific place. Buildings are physically embedded in their surrounding context, so it follows that built environments are best realised when they have a positive relationship with their specific context. That is, when they intrinsically belong to their place.

Luke’s design of the Masterplan 2 Project at Cranbrook is being realised with transformational outcomes for the Bellevue Hill Campus. It will literally “unlock” the campus in multiple ways, and it establishes a new and memorable portal to the school’s surrounding community at the campus’s northern presentation.

Within the campus, one of the fundamental qualities of the new masterplan is the legible and intuitive network of connectivity that it establishes across every level, stitching the new facilities into the many different adjacent existing conditions.

Level 5:
On the 5th level of the Vicars Centenary Building, the highest level of the development, the masterplan forms a new horizontal surface – the Centenary Lawn – that will become a focus of social and ceremonial gathering, “bookended” by the heritage-listed Cranbrook House and the new Chapel. This level restores the visual relationship that Cranbrook House originally had with its northern harbour-scape and to the visiting ships that initially connected colonial Sydney with the rest of the world. This is an important symbolic vista to have re-established because it gives expression to the vision of Cranbrook as a school that shapes its students as globally connected citizens.

Level 4:
Opens to the south to form a new external learning space within a garden and to the north with a broad sunny terrace that provides expansive views of Hordern Oval.

Level 3:
Engages positively with the existing “Teaching Street” drawing students into the heart of the Vicars Centenary Building and its communal Dining Commons and terrace.

Level 2:
Activates an expanded Camellia Court, forming a key pivot point in the masterplan that connects towards the New South Head Road gates and opens out towards the oval. This will be another highly utilised open space on the campus and will perform a gathering and pre function space for the adjacent new Packer Theatre.

Luke designed the innovative and visually stunning Masterplan 2 project.

Level 1:
Where the Centenary Building grounds itself with the new Great Hall opening out to embrace the crescent of Hordern Oval and a new pedestrian walkway that links to the facilities of the Murray Rose Aquatic and Fitness Centre beneath the restored Hordern Oval. A clear objective of the Masterplan 2 Project at Cranbrook was to create an intersection of activities, communal endeavours and built forms to nurture and foster students in their formative years, establishing the habits and culture of well-being throughout their future lives. The unlocking of the campus with this development goes a long way towards achieving that objective.

*At the time of publishing this article, Luke Johnson was honoured at the OCA Presidents’ Dinner on 15 October 2022 for his contribution to the revitalisation of the Senior School campus.