Studious industry

Architectural Review, The, July, 1994 by John (English Priest) Sergeant

Local industrial materials are used in this university building to achieve a low budget, energy efficient solution based on traditional patterns of building in the bush.

This Design building of Newcastle University is of interest for a number of reasons. In a wooded and architecturally polite campus, it houses a department whose roots are felt to lie in Australian industry. It is one of the first public works to be designed by a member of the young generation of the Sydney School in association with a friend from university days. And it appears at a moment when Australia itself is evolving a civilised and exuberant sense of purpose from its polyglot population.

Newcastle is situated in a warm-climate coastal zone north of Sydney. Although the city is a colonial creation on a hill by the Pacific, with the normal quota of stunning surfing beaches, it is unusual for depending on smoke-stack heavy industry. Between the university, in the bush to the west, and the city lies a 10km strip of steel mills, coal handling, warehousing and bulk cargo port. It is in allegiance to this world that the brief saw its meaning, and the architects their method and imagery.

The majority of buildings of the university are in brick, on undulant ground rising to wooded bush in the west. Their manner is informal, and typified by Ken Wooley's Student Union and Staff Building Complex (1963)(1); brown brick, low-rise, pitched roof and naturally-ventilated. To this has been added the School of Architecture extension (AR June 1993) by Michael Wilford with a student team and Suters Architects Snell. This is striking for its all over bright burgundy-red colour, and tall loggia-like central spine. Unfortunately the building is not site-specific; its spinal root goes from nowhere to nowhere, and although it speaks of protection, its height entrains rain (which in New South Wales usually comes at 45[degrees] as it is accompanied by wind). The site for the Design Building is at the south-eastern edge of the campus, set in new-growth eucalypt woods with a large car park to the east and a sports ground to the south.

Stutchbury & Pape, in association with Doug White, won the project by competition, in August 1992. Their proposal, which differs little from the completed building, separates the exhibition gallery and graduate studios beneath from the main undergraduate faculty building. The former is given a contemplative role at the crown of the slope and the latter seen as a dynamic workshop. Stutchbury says that it is 'a large house', consisting formally of those archetypal elements of Antipodean shelter: shed and veranda. The sheds contain the studios, and the veranda the staff rooms, separated by top-lit circulation, and they are set upon a concrete podium cut into the slope. This has enabled the section to be organised into a main level, shared by first and second years, a podium level for industrial design, and a mezzanine for Graphic Design that respond to increasing specialisation of the successive years of course philosophy.(2) Linking these levels spatially, and imparting a provocatively industrial identity, is a void with an attendant storage tower. At the east end, dissociated by a lecture-court adjoining the entrance, is the administrative area and at the west, overlooking the sports ground, is the showcase media room, the shop window of the Faculty.

The course is of four-year duration, and studios are seen in similar terms to those for architectural education: they are both student base and the site of group and individual tuition. All open easily to north-facing terraces. (The sun shines from the north in the southern hemisphere). In the case of podium level workshops, work can be wheeled outside through up-and-over or roll-up doors; the building is heavily staffed and seen as permeable and welcoming. Its operations deliberately entice students moving about the campus. The mezzanine takes the form of a wave-like canopy and sets out to provide high light levels required for graphics and draughting. The high east lights are formed of simple trussed roofs vertically faced in u/v tolerant profiled polycarbonate sheet, shaded by galvanised perforated metal.

The industrial form of the building was a product of the speed needed for what the architects called 'delivery', and a tight budget ($A2.7m.). This mentality extends to finishes and environmental performance. White was able to maintain this attitude for the duration of the contract. The epoxy-painted steel frame is clad in zincalume and corrugated colourbond panels;(3) it is insulated throughout with wool. Wool batts, in two 50mm lightly compressed layers have now been developed by the Australian Wool Board, and better the performance of fibreglass.(4) Fibro-board(5) is used for all external veranda wall finishes, painted and set flush with standard aluminium windows, and medium density fibreboard (compressed wood shaving-dust) used uncut and oil-sealed for staff rooms. These elements are so cheap that they can be used as pinboards or blackboards. Consonant with the working ethos of the design, they can be unscrewed and replaced as needed. In large spaces, finishes are white-faced sarking over the wool. In small studios and lecturers' rooms, ceilings are of white-painted plasterboard (corrugated zincalume). Paint colour are those of eucalypts: grey green, pink and brown. The entire building is naturally cooled by cross-draft and stack effect, air being drawn from the shaded perimeter and vented at high level through the high east lights.(6) These are formed of simple trussed roofs vertically faced in UV tolerant profiled polycarbonate sheet, shaded by galvanised perforated metal.