East Sydney Early Learning Centre

The East Sydney Early Learning Centre is an adaptive re-use of an existing 4 level 1920’s industrial building to house a 60 place childcare centre and community space within the tight knit urban grain of Darlinghurst.

Celebrating its unique existing building fabric and urban location, the building was conceived as a ‘mini-city’ that enabled experiential learning by re-imagining the urban fabric at a child’s scale. All decisions on interior layout, material detailing, window openings, and finishes, including infrastructural elements such as fire sprinklers, were conceptualised to encourage a fascination with cities and city life as a guiding pedagogical tenet for the childcare.

The initial project brief requested the closure of Berwick Lane to connect the John Birt memorial playground with the existing building, suggesting the childcare centre occupy the lower three levels of the existing building, with the community centre located on the top level. Following detailed urban analysis, community consultation and City of Sydney review a far more imaginative solution was realised – the laneway remained open and was significantly improved through a new stair construction, the community centre was located at the lower ground level to animate and enliven the laneway, and the top 3 levels of the building housed the childcare, with a treehouse bridge link crossing the laneway and providing a journey down to the ground level of the playground.

A series of play space houses or ‘pods’ are connected by a network of social laneways and indoor parks. Two further considerations within the development the internal ‘pod’ buildings animating the existing fabric was the creation of opportunities for funnels of natural light deep into the buildings’ interior, and the creation of a highly articulated interior for internal play spaces, creating a range of spatial circumstances for the many learning activities occurring within the interior including active play, theatrical play, imaginative play, and opportunities for quiet play.

The playful interior concept was integrated into other disciplines such as signage design, which drew inspiration from Scandinavian toy blocks to inspire a new ‘street’ sign and wayfinding aligned with the ‘mini-city’ concept.