The inner Sydney school where the gates are opened to everyone

It was a moment when old knees felt young again.

A bit like the ABC’s Old People’s Home for 4 Year Olds, Green Square Public School and Community Spaces’ new multi-generational choir began on Monday when seniors sang with the school’s junior choir and executed a few knee-bending dance moves.

The school, in one of the most densely populated neighbourhoods in Australia, is for children by day.

But its grounds, basketball court and meeting rooms, managed by Sydney City Council, are for everyone on weekends, holidays and after 6.30pm on school days. That’s prompted many in the community – neither grandparents nor parents of students – to volunteer at the school, too.

Principal Nicole Molloy said it was the first authentic community shared facility that she’d experienced. “We don’t close our gates at 3pm every day and keep people out. They’re welcomed in,” Molloy said.

Now celebrating its first birthday, the project by architects BVN, developed with advice from Molloy and other teachers, has won the Daryl Jackson Award for Educational Architecture from the 2026 Australian Institute of Architects.

AIA jury chair Adam Haddow said in “a time of societal paranoia and public distrust, good architecture is about trusting people”.

Green Square was designed to include people, not exclude them. Haddow hailed projects that are left open for public use where “occupants assume that someone is not going to come and tag a building or burn it down”.

It was architecture that assumed most people were good, wanted to live in great places, connected to their friends, family and the people around them.

Local Kathleen Hii, 75, a member of the new choir and who started a playgroup for the community, said they hadn’t realised the Beatles’ song Here Comes the Sun had moves the children knew. “Sun sun sun, full squat, then rising,” Hii said.

They were a bit hard on the seniors’ knees. But something magical happened, some intergenerational transmission of knee oil, and Hii said they had young knees again. “We walked out of there [on Monday] after singing feeling two inches taller,” she said.

BVN co-chief executive and architect Ali Bounds said they had turned the original brief upside down. Initially, the multipurpose play area with a full-size basketball court was planned for the top floor. But they moved it to the ground floor next to the community spaces – where it was easily accessible – to avoid the public traipsing through the classrooms destined for 600 students when full.

Bounds said there were often teenagers waiting outside after 6pm asking, “‘When’s the gate opening?’ And that happens most days.”

Hii said the school and its shared facilities had given the community a sense of belonging. “It is the magnet, it is the conduit.”

Many seniors now read to the young students. “I joke about rent a grandma,” said Hii, adding many of the children she read to were born overseas. “One child was from Mongolia, another from mainland China … None had a grandparent here.”

The NSW government announced in September that every new public school will share facilities with the community outside school hours, and more than 200 have already undertaken to do so.

Premier Chris Minns said, “I’ve never been a fan of locking up school grounds to the public. I want kids and families to be able to use the grounds outside of school hours.”

Many schools fear vandalism, and about 1200 schools have large security fences to keep people out.

Molloy said some people had feared the school would be damaged or graffitied. “I’ve not had a single issue because it’s special to everybody.”

The community had developed a real ownership of the space. “Because it’s theirs seven days a week. We’ve been here a year, and the place is well looked after and loved, and not just by us.”

Green Square’s walls are covered in a fine tensile mesh designed to make children feel safe without feeling imprisoned. It is also covered in a web of brick slips that provide privacy from the apartments that surround the school in every direction.

Just as the ground floor spaces and rooms can be used in different ways, Molloy and other teachers wanted the school’s classrooms to adapt. Furniture was designed to be moved, rooms have large dividers, small spaces for groups, outdoor meeting areas and large wet spaces for art.

Other national winners include:

• Sydney Fish Market by 3XN in association with BVN and ASPECT Studios, which won for commercial architecture
• Lacebark apartments by Smart Design Studio won the Frederick Romberg Award for Residential Architecture for multi-residential architecture apartment design
• Sydney Harbour Bridge Northern Access Cycleway by Collins and Turner with Aspect Studios, Eckersley O’Callaghan and Design 5 – Architects for urban design
• Central Station by Woods Bagot in collaboration with John McAslan + Partners for public architecture
• EA House by Bokey Grant won for new homes.