Darlington Public’s Building Of The Year

Darlington Public School recognised as a global leader at World Architecture Festival

At the edge of Sydney Uni’s Cadigal Green, a squat, steepled building hunches over a dry concrete pond. It looks like a chapel gone to seed. On the back verandah, ratty carpets trap wind-blown dust. Through dirty windows, dim, bulbous lights do their best to create a sense that the owners are still home. 

This is the original Darlington Public School building, opened in 1878. Its shabbiness owes a great deal to the fact that it closed 50 years ago, the victim of a campus expansion by Sydney Uni. In 1975, with just three days remaining in the school year, staff and students left the building for the last time and walked to the corner of Abercrombie and Golden Grove Street, the site of the new Darlington Public. 

Last year, the school was transformed again, after a series of renovations designed to update classrooms and help accommodate a growing student body. There was no migration required this time – construction was managed in stages, so teachers and students could continue on at the school throughout the year.

The centrepiece of the upgrade, a perforated aluminium screen that wends its way around much of the building’s upper level, gives the impression of a fish-net mid-cast. Art pieces by Blak Douglas and Neil Thorne recognise the Indigenous heritage of the area, while a rainwater-harvesting system and a focus on natural light and ventilation in the design reflect the school’s sustainability aims. 

In a ringing endorsement of architect fjcstudio’s design, Darlington Public beat over 800 entrants to take the coveted World Building of the Year prize at last year’s World Architecture Festival. Paul Finch, the Festival Director, described the design as “poetic, a building in which topography and landscape inside and outside, form and materials, flow seamlessly in an unexpectedly delightful way.”

The win was the second for fjcstudios, who also scooped the pool in 2013 for their work on Auckland Art Gallery. But, as studio associate Alessandro Rossi told the Guardian “The real winners are the children who will spend time in the building – a place of enrichment for years to come.”