NSW Chapter LEA Awards

JDH recently won the Learning Environments (Australasia) NSW Chapter Award for the New Construction Category for our project with St Catherine Laboure Catholic Primary School. The re-imagined facility at St Catherine Laboure Catholic Primary School now provides 14 new learning spaces, connecting to 7 refurbished spaces located around a shared central learning hub.

As winner of the Learning Environments Australia New Facility Award, the design of this school was credited to align with JDH’s values, pedagogy and place, and inspire deeper learning. JDH has designed the spaces to be transparent, connected and highly flexible. It’s these qualities that embody our company values, as architects that truly care about providing innovative and meaningful designs to make each client’s aspirations for learning shine. 

By bringing architects, teachers and students together in the collaboration stage, JDH Architects have created spaces built with a variety of users in mind.  Here, parents, friends and members of the school can come together and feel connected in communal spaces that spark ideas and ignite passions.

Special thanks to Sydney Catholics Schools & the teachers and students of St Catherine Laboure for their support throughout this project.

Here is what the Learning Environments NSW Chapter had to say about the project:

The re-imaged facility at St Catherine Laboure Catholic Primary School provides 6 new learning spaces, located around a shared central learning hub. During a consultation process that lasted 12 months, JDH Architects undertook a comprehensive a detailed process to ensure that the school community, the Parish and the local Indigenous Community, were involved in, and part of the creation of these new spaces.

The Design Thinking Workshops during the documentation phase sought to elicit new ways of thinking about learning spaces and to assist with transition into these spaces.?? In the resulting design, student focus is paramount and has led to a successful flexible outcome for the school, with clear evidence of links between the design and the educational approach.

The design of these dynamic, flexible spaces has resulted in improved utilisation of spaces and the creation of purposeful activities that spark innovative ways by which the students and teachers can come together in the learning process. The school writes of the success of the outcome, and the benefit it has seen in the creation of a safe, inclusive environment that is supportive of flexible pedagogies, and that is recognised across the Diocese as an exemplar.