Building 10, FASS & FoH Refurbishment, University of Technology, Sydney

The Awards Jury noted the project’s fun and engaging spaces that have the ability to adapt to suit the various users of each space; that the project is a highly professional and competent response, with fun and delight, commercial slickness and student-inspiring opportunity for learning; and that is a good brief that honoured the different teaching methods and curriculum requirements.

Project Details

Architects
Gardner Wetherill & Associates

Award
Winner, Category 3: Renovation / Modernisation – Over $2 million

Address
235 Jones St, Ultimo NSW 2007

Submitter
Toby Wetherill

Cost
$20,000,000

Photographer
Andrew Worssam Photography

Project Overview

Until late 2015, FASS (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences) and FoH (Faculty of Health) occupied space within both UTS City and Kuring Gai Campuses. This  project was born from the need to consolidate both faculties into one City building (CB10).

Seven floors of CB10 were earmarked for the new FASS and FoH occupants – spaces required consisted of a wide variety of functions: teaching labs; clinical labs; general teaching and computing spaces; offices for academics and support staff; executive offices for the FoH Dean’s Unit and a showcase Activity Based Environment for Higher Degree students of both faculties.

GWA facilitated several stakeholder workshops and developed a robust brief that encapsulated not only how the end users currently work and communicate but also how their future aspirations could be met.

A significant element of the new teaching spaces and laboratories is virtual classroom technology. GWA’s design proposals enabled seamless integration of technology into new and existing spaces, whether these were dedicated ‘classrooms’ or accidental spaces where students may gather.

As part of this project, UTS and GWA had the opportunity to explore an Activity Based Environment (ABE) model, which provides a greater level of amenity, beyond the conventional open plan and shared offices models.  The opportunity was to create a new kind of space for students that provides equivalent or greater level of amenity than the existing spaces.

The rationale for this new kind of space is a focus on identifying the tasks or activities that individuals perform, and creating spaces that support those activities. Implicit in this rationale is the notion that the diversity of activities captured in this typology do not sit together comfortably such that some activities conflict with others.

Depending on the eventual design and the nature of the activities to be supported, there is the potential for HDRs to find this new kind of space more effective at providing a productive environment than the traditional models. The new spaces provided spaces suitable for a multitude of tasks, including discourse, research, gathering of data, reading, analysis and reflection.

Additionally, the inherently social aspects of doing research are also reflected in the design thinking of space. Students belong to friendship networks, disciplinary groups and sub-groups, as well as year groups. Creating a sense of community amongst students and providing spaces to support these networks is important both to ensure their tenure at the University is a pleasant one.