A modest school in suburban Australia has fended off competition from skyscrapers, museums and airport terminals to be named World Building of the Year 2024.
Darlington Public School, in the Sydney suburb of Chippendale, beat more than 220 other shortlisted designs to win the coveted annual prize at the World Architecture Festival in Singapore on Friday.
Opened last fall, the project combines an angular brick campus building with a striking “sawtooth roof” with landscaped outdoor spaces, including a full-size basketball court and community garden. Gently curved metal screens surround a series of open-air terraces, filtering in daylight and protecting students’ privacy.
The site in Sydney’s south has long housed a school, although the old 1970s building was no longer fit for purpose, according to fjcstudio, the design firm behind the project. The Sydney-based architects said their new design had ‘radically transformed’ the school to provide ‘new and contemporary learning environments’, although the project aimed to capture ‘the spirit’ of the original campus.
According to the school’s website, the new campus will house a preschool, kindergarten and primary school and accommodate more than 500 students. A two-phase construction process allowed classes to continue during construction.
In the project description, fjcstudio said Darlington Public School had “strong links with Aboriginal people.” The design firm said it has contributed to the preservation of this cultural heritage by featuring indigenous art in the school hall, entrance and classrooms. Aboriginal murals painted on the walls of the old school, meanwhile, were reproduced in the cladding of the new building.
Following Friday’s announcement, Alessandro Rossi, associate at fjcstudio, said: “It’s very humbling considering the modest size 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.”
This year marked the 17th edition of WAF, which divides the awards into 18 categories, including sports, transport, healthcare and housing. The World Building of the Year was chosen from the winners of each category, chosen by a panel of 175 festival delegates. Other projects eligible for the top prize included Cyprus’ National Star Observatory, a Polish bus station and a solar power plant in Turkey.
Friday’s result marks the second consecutive year that WAF judges chose an educational building, with a serene boarding school in China taking the title last year. Darlington Public School is also the second building in Sydney to win the award in the past three years, after Quay Quarter Tower – dubbed the world’s first ‘upcycled’ skyscraper as two-thirds of an old high-rise has been retained on the site – in 2022 was won.
Other recent winners include a senior living complex in Singapore and a waste-to-energy plant with a ski slope on its roof in Copenhagen, Denmark.
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