Designed by Lyons Architect, the Swanston Academic Building of Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University is an architectural marvel yet to be explored. The university is known for bringing the industrial revolution to Australia by offering art, science, and technology courses. The Swanston Academic Building was designed to house the College of Business in the bustling heart of Melbourne.
Design and Planning
The design inspiration for this building was derived from the surrounding neighbourhood. Covered in colourful scales, the building tries to capture the exterior facade of the neighbouring buildings in a pixellated image. It uses that as its base design, which mirrors and camouflages with the surroundings. Covered with both folded and curved surfaces with jagged edges, the exterior facade of the building has a modern and outgoing look. “In the same spirit as the facade, the undulating walls were a result of the building being ‘affected and influenced’ physically by its surrounds,” said Lyons.
The facade design extends the relationship between the city and the building, allowing the campus to blend with the city and yet function as an autonomous campus embedded in the city grid. Designed to be highly porous, the campus openly provides the city imagery.
The building contains a variety of flexible learning spaces, from 300-person lecture theatres to 30-person classrooms, providing a learning space for Gen Zs and others. The project required the Lypns to provide 85 learning spaces, 11 informal areas for students, and accommodation for 800 staff in the college, within approximately 35,000 sqm of footprint.
Placing the students in the centre of the design, The Swanston Academic Building brings diversity. It creates a micro-community similar to the town for the students to engage and grow. Priority is given to making flexible and diverse spaces that stand out and are attractive for the students to spend their time in.
Double-height lobbies and “vertical campus” inspired planning for the ten-storey building are used for socializing, replacing traditional planning styles of a campus. Consisting of 300 pax lecture theatres and 30 pax classrooms, the campus provides several facilities to the students.
Materials and Construction
‘Portals’ are spaces allocated on each building level, providing an alternative to the traditional green spaces of a typical university campus. This has been made entirely possible due to the vertical zoning of the campus. The street is level as laneways and arcades provide greater accessibility for the students to go to neighbouring cafes and back to their learning spaces.
The portals are double-height and are characterized by their connection to natural lighting and ventilation, classy furniture, and stack differences between the learning spaces. With a diverse range of class sizes and a mix of teaching methods, collaborative, project-based, team teaching, etc., each finds its own space in the building.
In addition to offering unique internal views that face up, down, and straight out, the unique triangle window configuration (three windows per level) enhances the façade system’s environmental performance. The super-performative quality of the building envelope is further enhanced by lightweight sunshades that vary in size to fit the structure’s orientation. By using these design principles, the goal is to construct a facility that functions as a city campus that is both profoundly and precisely tied to the local city it occupies and is, for the students who utilize it, the campus as a city in miniature.
Industrial waste products were used in the construction process, and industry best practices guided the selection of sustainable building materials. The façade consists of full-glazed, solid, and 50/50 (half glass, half opaque) panels with diagonal sunshades at different depths; these panels are made of ecologically friendly, sustainable materials. Industrial waste materials from the site’s destruction were used to replace a portion of the cement used in the building. Repurposed, post-consumer recycled, and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified wood are among the types utilized in the structure. Many fit-out components have the Good Environmental Choice Australia (GECA) accreditation.
Sustainability Aspects
The structure has a 5-star green certification dedicated to sustainability, using less water and energy. SAB’s city campus design has unique potential for sustainability solutions. The strategies were used to achieve a five-star Greenstar (Design) grade span the campus, building components, and individual student areas. With a high utilization rate and extraordinarily high user satisfaction, the SAB offers a world-class learning facility with a carbon intensity around 35% lower than average. The project achieved a 15% space saving through a virtual timetabling method, resulting in $30 million in cost savings.
By collecting water for toilet flushing and irrigation, rainwater and greywater systems cut down the amount of potable water used for landscaping by 60% and for landscaping by 90%. The building’s layout encourages low-energy vertical transportation methods; escalators and stairs are found in the centre of the structure beneath the bright atrium, as opposed to the lifts, which are positioned out to the side. The building’s water is heated using solar panels, which use less energy and carbon than an electric system. The creative façade blocks 80% of summertime direct solar radiation and uses 10% less energy for air conditioning.
References:
- Dezeen. (2012). RMIT University Swanston Academic Building by Lyons. [online] Available at: https://www.dezeen.com/2012/11/06/rmit-university-swanston-academic-building-by-lyons/.
- Lyons | Australian public architecture & urban design specialists. (n.d.). RMIT Swanston Academic Building. [online] Available at: https://www.lyonsarch.com.au/project/rmit-swanston-academic-building/.
- Archello. (n.d.). RMIT University, Swanston Academic Building | Lyons. [online] Available at: https://archello.com/project/rmit-university-swanston-academic-building.
- Swanston Academic Building. (n.d.). Www.rmit.edu.au. https://www.rmit.edu.au/about/our-locations-and-facilities/facilities/learning-and-teaching-spaces/swanston-academic-building
