i
COMMUNITY
A stripy facade modelled on a skyline bounds the circular campus of this Melbourne
primary school, designed by Australian firm McBride Charles Ryan to reference
walled cities around the world, Dallas Brooks Community Primary School is an
amalgamation of three local primary schools in Dallas, Broadmeadows.
D
allas Brooks Community Primary School is part of a number of public school developments in
the area collectively referred to as the Broadmeadows Regeneration Project. Broadmeadows
has a proud working class history, however, in recent times its strong manufacturing base
has waned. Broadmeadows has also been a beneficiary of the latest wave of immigrants to
Melbourne and recent immigrants from Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon and Sudan compose greater
than 60 percent of the population. Dallas, in central Broadmeadows, is subject to these recent
demographic changes. Dallas too also has been awarded the dubious honour of Melbourne’s
most financially underprivileged suburb.
The Broadmeadows Regeneration Project is a Victorian government initiative aimed at
producing positive social change in a community where the lack of community services, poverty, crime, and
social marginalisation represent genuine challenges. Broadmeadows, as the name suggests, lacks urbanism. For
the architects it was important that this building provide some urban density and that it gave the new school
presence and identity within the suburb.
The Dallas Brooks school leaders were determined to not just develop a primary school but to realise a
community hub – a birth to old age learning facility that could also supplement many of the pressing community
needs of the suburb. They achieved this by not only the judicious use of available funding but by developing
strategic local partnerships. To that end, and in addition to the typical primary school they have provided in
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