Prahran High School

A clever color scheme employing Tarkett vinyl and Desso carpet tiles has helped bring a sense of vibrancy and the essence of the natural world into an Award-winning high-rise city school.

Located in Melbourne’s inner suburbs, Prahran High School (PHS) was recently constructed on a highly constricted yet premium site. This dictated vertical building, at five storeys high, is amongst the first and tallest vertical high schools in Victoria. Rather than just taking the building to the site edges and creating a simple, boxy footprint, the client, Victorian School Building

Authority, engaged architecture and integrated design practice, Gray Puksand. The architect devised plans to create two slipped and shifted building plates around a central light-filled internal void which brings a sense of the outdoors in, and allows for large external balconies at either end of every floor. The goal of infusing the urban building with elements of the natural world was in the architects’ mind when it came to selecting colors for the school’s flooring.

Desso carpet tile colors were chosen not just for the color scheme, they are also used to delineate areas and to assist wayfinding. “The floor colors identify different building levels and the Desso feature carpets are also used to define the spaces within levels,” said Ms Piggford. “It’s nice to see that the students follow the color-coding quite naturally.

Over 3600m2 of Tarkett flooring products, comprised of Desso carpet tile and Tarkett vinyl sheet flooring, were used throughout PHS’ interiors. One of Tarkett’s most innovative and urban-suitable flooring products was specified for PHS: Desso AirMaster®. AirMaster®’s unique yarn structure helps improve indoor air quality by capturing and retaining fine dust particles, making it perfect for asthma- and allergy sufferers.

Studies by Radboud University in the Netherlands have shown that the concentration of fine dust in a school classroom was dramatically reduced over a two-week period using Desso AirMaster® along with an air purifier. Particulate matter was reduced by 60 percent during the weekend and 30 percent on weekdays.