The Italian Bilingual School provides a bilingual and bicultural education incorporating a European perspective which broadens students’ educational experiences and opens new horizons. The NSW curriculum is delivered both in English and in Italian. The teaching methodology, based on the Canadian model “one face-one language”, where one teacher only teaches in English and one teacher only teaches in Italian, using the languages as vehicles rather than only subjects, makes IBS a unique school within the Australian educational environment.

The client’s brief was to provide a multipurpose facility accommodating a library with two zones, one for the school and the other a public resource centre, connecting café with large area suitable for informal meetings, early childhood learning facility, classrooms for five hundred students including multi media facilities, administration offices with meeting rooms, canteen and lunch room and a multipurpose terrace suitable for sport activities.