Surprising location in Australia wins award for world’s best new building – so what do you think of the design?
An Australian public school has been named World Building of the Year at a prestigious architectural competition.
Darlington Public School, in Sydney’s Inner West, was awarded the title at the World Architecture Festival in Singapore on Friday.
The coveted prize was chosen from winners in the festival’s 18 categories, including sports, transport, healthcare and housing.
Darlington Public School opened its new brick campus building last fall.
It features a ‘sawtooth’ roof and large, curved metal screens allowing students to enjoy natural light indoors while providing privacy.
The designers of the renovated school, FJC Studio, also provided several landscaped outdoor spaces, a basketball court and a communal garden.
The former 1970s Darlington Public School building was declared unsuitable shortly before FJC Studio was commissioned to provide ‘new and contemporary learning environments’.
The Sydney-based architects said they have “radically transformed” the school while maintaining “strong links with Aboriginal people”.
Darlington Public School (pictured), in Sydney’s inner west, was named World Building of the Year by the World Architecture Festival on Friday
Indigenous works of art can be seen in the school hall, entrance and classrooms.
Original Aboriginal murals painted on the 1970s building were also reproduced on the cladding of the new building.
The new school was built in two phases, meaning that students from kindergarten to primary school could continue their lessons during construction.
The World Building of the Year was chosen by a panel of 175 festival delegates from several major projects around the world, including Cyprus’ National Star Observatory, a Polish bus station and a solar power plant in Turkey.
This year was the second year in a row that the WAF jury selected an educational building.
Alessandro Rossi, associate at FJC Studio, said of the win: ‘It’s very humbling considering the modest scale of the building – it’s a small school project, so winning all the other major projects at WAF is a testament to the client and the community involvement that drove the design process.
“The real winners are the children who will spend time in the building – a place of enrichment for years to come.”
FJC Studio previously won the award in 2013, making it the first company to win the award twice.
Darlington Public School (pictured) opened its new brick campus last fall, designed by FJC Studio
The school (pictured) has a ‘sawtooth’ roof and large, curved metal screens allowing students to enjoy natural light indoors while offering privacy
Other past winners include a senior living complex in Singapore, a waste-to-energy plant with a rooftop ski slope in Denmark and a boarding school in China.
Festival program director Paul Finch said FJC Studio’s design for the school generated ‘a reading of the history of place, culture and time’.
“The result of the project is poetic, a building in which topography and landscape, inside and outside, form and materials, flow seamlessly into each other in an unexpectedly beautiful way,” he said.
‘It is also an inspiring proposal about the recognition and reconciliation of historical differences – a pointer to a better future for all.’
Australian architects received 12 other prizes from the festival, including the Parramatta Aquatic Center for best sports building and the Nightingale Village apartments in Melbourne’s hip Brunswick suburb for best residential building.
