 | UTAS ARCHITECTURE The University of Tasmania’s new School of Architecture, by Six Degrees and SBE, is a workshop for investigation and an unusual, speculative space.
REVIEW CERIDWEN OWEN
PHOTOGRAPHY PATRICK RODRIGUEZ
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The School of
Architecture has been
relocated to a 1950s
railway engineering
shed in the Inveresk
cultural precinct.
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An overview of
the main open area
of the new school,
showing the visual
connection between
all levels.
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The entry
ramp, showing the
walls made from the
school’s CNC Router.
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Looking from
above down to the
first and second years’
studio space.
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The contained
stairwell has holes
and small windows
to maintain visual
connections.
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A full-height
glazed wall separates
the workshop from
the studios.
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A corridor
space, showing the
materiality of the
building.
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How does an architect feel when faced with the
commission to design a new school of architecture?
Stephen Holl, following his untimely departure from
the commission to design Cornell University’s new
architecture school, described the process as being
“like a brain surgeon operating on his own brain”.¹ With Cornell now onto its third appointed architect,
the marriage between architects as practitioners and
architects as clients has evidently not been an easy one.
As an architect and member of staff at the School of
Architecture and Design, University of Tasmania, I have
had the opportunity to participate in this somewhat
unusual relationship from the “other side” of the
architect/client relationship. This has its comforts (glad
that’s not my problem!), its temptations (perhaps we
could …) and its frustrations (if only we had another
million dollars), but overall our collaboration with Six
Degrees Architects and Sustainable Built Environments
(SBE) has been smooth sailing.
This partnership between architects and
environmental consultants was a key factor in the
selection of a design team by UTas to realize the school’s
vision for ecologically sustainable architecture. It is also
arguably the reason for the synergy between consultants
and clients, with the design team’s inclusion of an
intensive design charrette between consultants, staff and
students in the initial design stages of the project. These
early explorations quickly led to the realization that the
school could not be accommodated within its existing
facilities at the Newnham campus on the outskirts of
Launceston, and a new home for the school was found in
a 1950s railway engineering shed within the inner-city
Inveresk cultural precinct.
The shift from Newnham offered some clear
advantages, most notably the physical proximity to the
School of Visual and Performing Arts and to the city, with
the potential of reduced car dependency for the school.
However, it also came with other challenges, including a
greatly stretched budget to build essentially from scratch
within a warehouse “shell”. The existing building is a
highly unusual space for Launceston – a single-storey
sawtooth volume of 2,600-square-metre footprint and
12-metre height clad on all sides in steel-framed glazing. A
robust concrete structure supports large overhead cranes
and a more delicate timber truss and steel sheet roof.
The design solution preserves the scale and
permeability of the existing warehouse by squeezing the
main accommodation into a three-storey timber “cliff” along the eastern edge of the building. A lecture theatre,
seminar and tutorial rooms, computer labs, offices and
studios for the upper years occupy this building edge,
while first and second year studios and the workshop
teaching space fill the ground floor of the main volume.
A full-height glazed wall separates the workshop from
the studios to provide a level of acoustic separation
while simultaneously acknowledging the central role
of the workshop in the school’s philosophy of learning
by making. Physical connections are maintained by
large sliding doors, allowing potential vehicle access for
exhibition installations or the possibility of constructing
additional accommodation if future demands require it.
The “cliff” operates to provide spatial and
habitational compression within the fluidity of this main
volume. Occupants enter along its clearly demarcated
edge, and are led up a ramped tunnel of routed formply
to the main reception area. From here, the view into the
main space is revealed and contained by a continuous
slot, while a castellated stair hanging from the cliff
edge controls movement into the studios beyond. The
stepping section of the cliff allows views between the
horizontal circulation paths along its upper edges,
while also allowing a more generous visual connection
with the main volume. The clarity and containment
of circulation along these edges allow the space to
feel “occupied” even with only a handful of people in
the building.
Another purpose of the cliff is to provide thermal
relief to building occupants when required. Many of
the environmental initiatives in the project reflect a
low-tech, “woolly jumper” approach to design. Given the
environmental and financial impracticalities of heating
such a large volume, only localized radiant heating is
provided in the main volume. This will be adequate for
most situations, but there will be times when thermal
conditions call for retreat to the contained spaces of the
cliff, which are serviced by an efficient hydronic heating
system from an air-source heat pump.
Cooling is less of a problem in the Tasmanian
climate, and the building operates primarily on passive
systems. A mini “labyrinth” constructed between the
slab and the raised ground floor of the cliff provides
pre-cooling to high-occupancy teaching spaces, while
a building management system is designed to control
stack ventilation through louvres in the sawtooth roof.
However, with the increasing unpredictability of the
climate (as evidenced by the extreme temperatures
experienced in February at the time of our move), there
will inevitably be times when the airy open spaces of the
main volume become a more attractive option.
The low-tech environmental systems can be seen
as part of a broader strategy of simplicity and legibility
in the building. A number of imperatives support this
approach, including cost, pedagogy and the context of
the warehouse typology. Internally, there is an honesty
to structural, material and mechanical expression,
while externally the oversized numbered water tanks
announce the environmental philosophy of the school.
While this has the potential to become overly didactic
and clumsy, in most cases the sophistication with
which elements are placed, contrasted and articulated
transforms them from the mundane to the extraordinary.
For example, the green foil insulation board that wraps
the ceiling of the upper-floor studios provides both a
surprising sense of intimacy and a dramatic contrast
to the existing sawtooth glazing when viewed from
opposite directions. Interesting relationships are also
established between the “tough” industrial aesthetic and
the lacy delicacy of the routed formply. Similarly, the
fibreglass panels that sheath the wall of the internal staff
corridor in the centre of the cliff maintain an over-scaled
industrial profile while simultaneously providing an
unexpected lightness and elegance akin to shoji screens.
Perhaps most importantly, this robust approach
resists the preciousness that is common in many works
of architecture. The building can be inhabited, adapted
and personalized. It remains somehow incomplete; in
fact, some people have asked when the building is going
to be “completed”. For me, part of the beauty of the
space is that it is not completed and (I hope) never will
be. Its permanent state of incompletion and adaptation
reflects its position as a school of architecture and design
– not a gallery for “finished” works, but a workshop for
investigation and interrogation of the meanings and
possibilities of architecture.
Ceridwen Owen is a lecturer at the School of Architecture
and Design at the University of Tasmania and a partner
of Core Collective.
¹ Architectural Record, Vol 190 Issue 9, September 2002, p. 51.
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Looking from
one of the computer
laboratories, over the
workshop.
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Computer
laboratories.
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Smaller, screened-off areas on the ground floor accommodate group workshops.
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These
top-level spaces show
the honest expression
of structure.
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SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, UNIVERSITY OF TASMANIA, LAUNCESTON
Architect
Six Degrees
Architects and
Sustainable Built
Environments,
architects in
collaboration.
Six Degrees Architects
project team
Peter Malatt,
Simon O’Brien
(design architects);
Giles Lawson,
Glenn Irwin
(documentation).
SBE project team
Chris Barnett
(project architect);
David Oppenheim
(brief refinement);
Erika Bartak
(materials advice);
Luke Smeaton
(environmental
computer modelling).
Builder
Vos Construction.
Structural consultant
George E Apted and
Associates.
Services consultant
Engineering Solutions
Tasmania.
Building surveyor
Protek Consulting.
Acoustic consultant
Watson Moss
Growcott.
Fire engineer
Pitt and Sherry.
Soil engineer
BFP Consultants.
Land surveyor
GJ Walkem and Co.
Cost consultant
Simon Wragg and
Associates.
Landscaping
TNLA.
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