In March 2009, Branksome Hall was invited by the South Korean government to establish a campus within the Global Education City on the UNESCO World Heritage listed island of Jeju. Branksome Hall was identified as one of the World’s top eight schools by a Boston consulting firm, and thus won its place to be invited into this national project.
The School was to accommodate 11-1200 students with a GFA of approximately 45,420m2 on a land parcel that was 94, 955m2. An international architectural design competition was held and the joint venture team of MKPL (Singapore) and Samoo Architects and Engineers won the competition. They immediately began workshops and consultations with the Branksome Hall community and consultants to design a campus that would be innovative, iconic and reflect the mission, vision and philosophy of Branksome.
As the School Architect, and a graduate of Branksome Hall, Mary Jane Finlayson was invited to participate in the process to design the new school in the form of a peer review that would take provide assurance to the Board of Governors that the design of the School was sound, but also sensitive to its Canadian roots. She travelled to Singapore to meet with the design team and took part in a series of intensive reviews of the work in progress, proposing modifications to strengthen the design concepts and sharing past experience with the more complex programme components.
The resulting School is remarkable, incorporating state of the art academic facilities that include an Olympic-sized swimming pool, Hockey Arena, Performing Arts Centre, Golf and Tennis Academies, Science Labs etc. , all set within an integrated, sustainable campus environment.
