The senior school precinct, in which the dining hall/cafeteria will be located, will form a marketplace of collision and engagement for boys and staff at the heart of the school.

It will be a home for the boys, their aspirations, conversations and collaborations. A place of enterprise, where opportunities are identified and explored, and solutions refined and brought to bear for the greater good.

The redeveloped Keon-Cohen Dining Hall/Cafeteria will form the hub of this precinct. Boys and teachers will gather to meet and eat, and share news and ideas, as they take time away from routines and let their minds wander to all that might be possible.

The Keon-Cohen Dining Hall and the senior school precinct are being developed to embrace and enhance conversational learning at Scotch. The senior school house home rooms will be located around the precinct to support pastoral care and the development of each boy.

The concept extends the Keon-Cohen Building to the west, allowing for a large dining/casual eating space.

It incorporates a canteen kitchen within the existing eastern end of the building, and introduces a part mezzanine. The project also includes associated landscaping to create an open square where conversations can continue outdoors.

Scotch is home to some 160 boarders, from year 7 to 12. Boys reside in one of three boarding houses and in this environment they learn to share their lives with others from a wide range of backgrounds.

Boarding at Scotch provides boys with access to the school's outstanding facilities, in the one 27-hectare location.

In addition to the five main ovals, two multipurpose playing fields (including 26 tennis courts), indoor swimming pool and gymnasium, and rowing facilities, there is the state of the art music and drama centre, (the James Forbes Academy), a new world-class science centre, (the Sir Zelman Cowen Centre for Science) and the Spencer Centre for Design and Technology.

Founded in 1851, Scotch College has been educating boys for 168 years. Located in the heart of suburban Melbourne, the beautiful single campus, spanning 27 hectares and flanked by the Yarra River, provides a home for the Scotch family of boys, staff, parents and old boys.

Scotch College is the oldest continuing secondary school in Victoria. It was founded by the Presbyterian Church of Victoria on the initiative of the first settled minister of the Presbyterian Church in the then colony, the Reverend James Forbes.

Under the first principal, Mr Robert Lawson, it was initially known as the Melbourne Academy. At this time, the school occupied a small house in Spring Street in the City of Melbourne.

The school owes much to the foresight of those who arranged the purchase of the present site in Hawthorn and to those responsible for the transfer of the school to this "new and distant rural setting".

While the East Melbourne site greatly limited growth, the new site, with ample space for playing fields and direct access to the river, made it possible for the school to expand and develop into the Scotch of today. The Hawthorn site was purchased in 1914 and by 1926 the transfer to the new site was completed.

The school aims to deliver an education that, secure in the traditions of its past and Christian belief, opens boys' minds to the rich diversity of the world in which they live and challenges them to question and explore everything they find, with integrity, humour and compassion.

This is done in an exciting, intimate environment that nurtures self-expression and self-worth while promoting the uniqueness of each boy's journey.