Shaping Lives

by Oshadha Perera

This essay was highly commended in the Rangatahi category of The Warren Trust Awards for Architectural Writing 2023.

“Looking great,” my art teacher says, pointing at my artboard.

I pause for a moment and consider how the year’s work has turned out. Drawings, paintings, etchings and woodcuts. Nine pieces of art that complement each other, that have grown upon one another. The whole year, starting from monochrome sketches and leading to finely defined paintings, has felt like one big journey. And here I am, working on my last painting in what would be my last week at school.

At the start of the year, when brainstorming themes for our artboards, I wanted to choose something that would depict my life so far. What is my identity? What has made me who I am today? These were questions I wanted to answer. And as a result, anyone looking at my artboard would see an elegant gothic-style building featured in each of my paintings.

I can still remember my first day of school, when I was amazed by how majestic this place looked, with its brick-layered buildings and slanted ceilings. Back then, appearances meant a lot to me and if I’m honest, that’s one of the reasons I chose this school in the first place. But during my five years at high school, I have grown as a person, and I’ve come to realise that external appearance is not everything. My school journey is closely linked to these high ceilings and stained-glass windows, but that’s because architecture isn’t just about how something looks. It represents the effort someone put into designing this place. As such, it defines how comfortable and content people living here feel. It decides whether someone runs away when they leave high school, or whether they will turn and look back.

The 1923 blueprint of the school is framed and hung for everyone, especially the school’s students, to look at. The hand-drawn plans, with their carefully constructed blue and red lines, show just how much thought and effort was put into designing this place. The architect didn’t just want to design a ‘building’. Instead, the intention was to design a place that lives and breathes. A living community, where everyone who joins this school will feel at home. Seeing the blueprints sets an expectation the moment someone steps into the school. It tells the students that this place has received a lot of love and care before it was even built, so it is now their chance to enjoy what is offered and take on the responsibility of preserving this place for the next generation. It tells them that everyone under this roof is part of the school family. It’s the same expectation students lived by when I started as a year nine student, and it’s the same responsibility I felt each year when new students were welcomed into the school. There was always the feeling that I needed to do the right thing just because of what this school meant to everyone around me, even if my teenage brain wanted to break rules at certain times.

The personality of this building has shaped who I am as a person. Whenever I step in through the school gates, I feel a sense of pride, a feeling that I’m part of a legacy. This feeling seems almost intentional, something the architect had in mind the whole way through. When year 13 students leave school, they are allowed to sign one of the building’s bricks, to become a tangible part of this building’s legacy, something many of us look forward to. And every time a student walks through the main hallway, they make sure not to step on the school crest, as an acknowledgement of the effort put into designing this building and its long history. As such, respect is something this building has cultivated in each of its students, including me. But more than anything, the most important feeling comes when I play handball in the school quad during lunch. It’s the feeling that I could lie on the concrete floor surrounded by the giant brick-layered buildings and feel that everyone here is one big family.

There have been new classrooms added over the years, but the gothic architecture has been preserved throughout the school. It tells the stories of students who walked through these hallways in the 1920s and students who fought in WWII. It connects the stories of students who had to use slide rules for maths to students who now use graphic calculators. The stories of young people who made this place their home. One day, I too will be able to tell stories of running along these hallways and hiding behind curtains during class. Crying when times were tough and laughing when the world seemed so bright. Stories of our wild-ride teenage years. And it all started with one person, an architect, who decided to give a life and a personality to what could’ve been a mere building.

As I add finishing touches to my painting, I have a newfound appreciation of what this school means to me. The saturated colours reflecting off the stained-glass windows and tracery aren’t just visual elements anymore. It sculpts the lives of its students. It represents the efforts someone put into designing the school, and how that has given birth to a strong sense of family and belonging. These buildings are not just the inspiration for my art, it’s something that has shaped my life over my time at high school. As my paintings have developed over the years, so have I as a person.

When I leave school next week, I will be out in the open world. A sea of opportunities, as one of my teachers says. But I know that I will always look back at this place with fond memories, wanting to sit in a classroom for one more day. The framed blueprints, arched hallways and signed bricks will always be there in my mind as the one place that shaped my life and made me who I am today.

Image: Mike Watson