PROJECTS
Scientia Building UNSW
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DETAILS
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G.M.B Architects
(web)
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| Bovis Lend Lease (web) | ||
| Public Building | ||
| 2000 | ||
| Sydney | ||
| John Gollings (web) |
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The Scientia has been designed to embody the progressive spirit of the UNSW, and to create a place of spontaneous gathering and of ceremonial focus for the university and the wider community. A sandstone podium anchors the building to its site. This is split at the line of the UNSW Mall, creating an open pedestrian passage through the building and into a new public square where the axial vista is terminated by a grove of poplar trees. The exhibition, function and performance spaces of Scientia are located within this podium. The main ceremonial rooms are on either side of the passage, accommodated within fine, louvred volumes that filter sunlight into warm, timber-lined interiors. Standing between the two volumes is the tree-like structure of the foyer. These tall, open forms, raised to the sky, are the central focus for the building, the axial mall and campus as a whole. The form of these structures, in laminated jarrah, steel and glass, give a gentle sense of enclosure, breaking the sunlight not unlike the shelter of a natural tree canopy. In this way shelter, openness and transparency characterise the centre of Scientia and the centre of the university.
Standing at the conclusion of the university's axial mall and on a significant change of grade, the building's sandstone podium absorbs this change in an ascendant pedestrian passage leading to a new public square and a grove of poplar trees in the upper campus. In this central slot, now a key focus for the university community and the public at large, laminated timber, glass and steel tree-forms rise to the sky, alluding to the ancient groves of Academe and to hallowed liberal humanist academic traditions. The tree forms also determine the dramatic, energetic structure of the grand foyer, with the dignified ceremonial hall to the north and the music auditorium space and generous main function room to the south. Finely and inventively detailed, subtly and intelligently responsive to its program, sensitive in its responses to environmental and energy issues, and consistent throughout in its materials and structural expression, The Scientia is a rare, highly refined work whose language is international yet whose varying and changeable transparencies are both elegantly rational and pragmatically Australian. The UNSW and the Sydney metropolis are privileged by this consummate work of public architecture.
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