The St James Catholic Primary School modernisation project was ambitious. We renovated 50% of the school while it was still operating. A necessary modernisation as the existing learning areas significantly deteriorated.

At the heart of this transformation is the reinterpretation of existing building stock, into bright modern teaching and learning facilities. The existing facilities were enclosed, and opaque in a traditional classroom format. The school wanted facilities that had lots of transparency and connectedness with breakout opportunities.

The school footprint is tightly constrained and located over two adjacent sites split by a public laneway. Our idea was to connect them together via an internal air bridge over the lane, dubbed the 'Sky Bridge'. Crucially, the bridge allowed the students to travel safely between the two parts of the school and create additional breakout spaces.

The School in the Sky became a part of the identity of the project and subsequently the school. The teaching and learning spatial reconfiguration brought large amounts of transparency, connectedness and opportunity to the students and staff through multi-use spaces and micro breakouts. These breakout spaces encourage an extension of the classroom for individual or group work in an array of configurations comprising built-in joinery and furniture.