Designed by Durbach Block Jaggers and BVN Architecture, the new building boasts strikingly sculptural design, as well as a range of sustainability measures that give it a 6-star Green Star rating.
The UTS Science and Health Building takes its place in the UTS Master Plan as the final wall of Alumni Green. Its maximum envelope protects and preserves the winter sunlight onto the new green and collegiate heart of the campus.
The building is an addition to Building 4 Science Building, housing the Faculty of Science and Graduate School of Health. The master plan described a low rise, stepped building, set to preserve and protect solar exposure to the Alumni Green in winter.
Through canting, sweeping arcs, the southern facade is able to, in a ‘less and more’ way, provide the same quantum of solar access to the Alumni Green as well as additional floor area. The building façade is a monolithic light weight material, with double layers of offset windows for each floor.
The windows vary in size and are arranged in a concertina pattern, swelling and billowing with the building’s curving form. Graded coloured reveals, based on the colour works of artist, Gustav Klimt, are reminiscent of a grove of trees. The building is loosely divided into generic and figured spaces. Large flexible spaces house research and teaching laboratories, offices, flat floor teaching and consulting spaces.
The building contains a range of science facilities ranging from specialist research facilities – a Clean Suite with two nested P C2 lab s , a vacuum and furnace lab , a future imaging suite to house MRI and CT s canner, P C2 labs and QC 5.2 labs, as well as Graduate School of Health clinical teaching spaces and Australia’s largest undergraduate science teaching space, a two hundred seat Super lab.
Highly connected, figured and sculpted circulation, student commons, and meeting spaces connect these purposeful rooms above and below ground. Animated , connective spaces join Building 7 to Building 4, including new front door and reception, circulation and top lit stair, break out spaces and meeting rooms, reinvigorate a once lost corridor.
Overscaled circulation and volumes, canting walls , strategic skylights and reflective surfaces light the route from the Alumni Green colonnade to the student spaces below ground, including the super lab and lecture theatre. Reflected light and colour charge these spaces with mystery and might.
The technical servicing requirements and structural configuration of these spaces are considerable within a narrow footprint and vertically stacked building.
The UTS Science and Health Building achieved a 6star green Star rating through numerous incremental design elements, including pre conditioning intake air via a labyrinth in the Library Retrieval System moat, the use of a façade material made up of 97% recycled glass and the provision of a green roof to the building. Source by Durbach Block Jaggers.
Location: Sydney, Australia
Architect: Durbach Block
Practice Team: Jaggers Neil Durbach, Camilla Block, David Jaggers, Stefan Heim, Erin Field, Sarah Kirkham, Deborah Hodge, Mitchell Thompson, Alex Holman, Xiaoxiao Cai
Partner: BVN Architecture
Principal: Abbie Galvin
Practice Director: Paul Pannell
Project Team: Elena Bonann, Kristin Neise, Erika Halim, Ian James, Michael Janeke, Manny Prouzos, Lucy Rimmer, Valentine Steisel, Benjamin Chew, Joe Fiumedinisi, Michelle Farman, Laura Robinson, Jess Battersby
Structural Consultant: Taylor Thomson Whiting
Planner: JBA Urban Planning Pty Ltd
Accessibility: Morris Goding Accessibility Consulting (NSW)
Certifier: Steve Watson & Partners
BCA: Steve Watson & Partners
Electrical: Steensen Varming (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Mechanical: Steensen Varming (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
ESD/Greenstar: Steensen Varming (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Lighting: Steensen Varming (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Hydraulic: Arup
Fire Engineering: Arup
Landscape: Aspect Studios
Façade: Surface Design & Kingston Building Group
Construction Team: Richard Crookes Construction
Project Manager: Savills Project Management
Client Project: Director Mark Treble
Cost Planner: Davis Langdon/Aecom
Lab Gas Engineering: Jacobs Sinclair Knight Merz
Year: 2014
Images: Anthony Browell, Darren Bradley, Julia Charles, Peter Bennetts, James Guerrisie, Courtesy of Durbach Block Jaggers
