Darlington Public School
Darlington Public School, located on Gadigal Country in inner Sydney, has approximately a 30% First Nations student population and a long relationship with the local Aboriginal community spanning generations. From the outset, fjcstudio engaged the school and wider community on possibilities for integrating culture through inclusive design, landscape, artwork, and built elements. The Aboriginal Art Group, comprising the School Executive, Aboriginal staff, grandparents, and parents, met through all design phases, and their input directly shaped the architecture. The design includes a public entry undercroft with built-in seating, a hall opening to that undercroft for yarning and after-hours community use, a library positioned as the hearth of the school, landscape carrying local edible and medicinal species and an interpretation of the Black Wattle Creek tributary, and totems for wayfinding. Learning hubs supporting active, quiet, collaborative, and withdrawal settings were developed with the school community and education planners New Learning Environments.
Where the group supported language-based wayfinding, fjcstudio designed the graphics capability and left the content for the school community and Elders to determine over time, so authorship remained with them. A tension between the cultural sensitivity attached to enclosure and the school’s need for a secure boundary was resolved without compromise: the fence was removed, the site edge was formed from the brick walls of the buildings themselves, and the perforated verandah screen was patterned after the endemic Casuarina. Collaborators included Uncle Neil (Thorne), Aunties, artist Blak Douglas (Adam Hill), families, students, the school principal and staff, neighbours, and Schools Infrastructure NSW.
The school’s extensive Aboriginal art collection was preserved, recorded and featured throughout, and Indigenous art murals were photographed and featured on the walls of the new school to keep that history alive for the next generation. Sustained feedback loops through design and construction produced an engaged and supportive community, and the project was recognised as World Building of the Year at WAF 2024.
Explore the architecture, landscape and interiors of Darlington Public School.
