Alexandria Park Community School is on Gadigal Land and is a fully connected learning precinct for over 2,000 children between the ages of 4 to 18 years.

Framed around the idea of ‘Clouds’, the project is a community-focused precinct that means different things to different people. Blurring the perception of the site boundary and merging the outdoor play areas of the school with the adjacent public park, the project sought to decolonize the approach to enclosure.

A key tactic of dual language place naming and wayfinding was used by the project team to embed a positive approach to social inclusion, decolonizing the institutional nature of schools. Working with our cultural mentor and linguistic advisor, the project team developed inspiring concepts for naming gathering spaces, administration, the library, and sporting zones, reimagining the way these parts of a school should be named that together created a narrative for the school that was deeply rooted in the place.

Building upon the graphic concepts of artist Tony Albert in the 2016 book “Alexandria Park Community School is Gadigal Land,” the design and graphic realization of language is the result of real community engagement.