Between Four Walls
AUTHOR: Chris Sheedy DATE: 17.09.07 ISSUE 1, 2007
A new state-of-the-art building that brings together some of the finest minds in business education means academics, students and industry now have an exciting new home.
A vital aspect of the vision for the new Australian School of Business was to bring together, under one roof, the great minds that make it such a powerful force in the world of business education. That has now been realised with a technologically advanced new building on the campus of the University of New South Wales.
| The building is an exciting, world-class facility that will greatly benefit students and the business world. |
"There's been a significant investment by the university in building this facility," says Professor Alec Cameron, Dean of the Australian School of Business. "It means the quality of service we can provide to students, staff and the business community is far enhanced. A lot of attention has been paid to ensuring the design fits the purpose. Considerable effort has also gone into the design to make it an attractive place for students to spend time before, during and after classes.
On the top floor we have a stylish business lounge, an area with a large balcony that looks out over Randwick Racecourse to the Sydney city skyline, which we'll use for internal purposes and external functions."
Planning and fit-out of the building has taken place over five years. During this time a design brief was written after looking at the best that other business Schools around the world had to offer, as well as borrowing heavily from academic research that looked into the most effective use of space for learning purposes. The result, says Jane Westbrook, Director Alumni and Community Partnerships, is an exciting, world-class facility that will greatly benefit stakeholders, particularly students and the business world.
"There was a particular type of experience we wanted our students to have," Westbrook says. "For example, there are world class lecture theatres, teaching rooms and formal and informal meeting spaces. There's a postgraduate common room for students where they've got wireless access. There's access to coffee and tea and lunch spaces. So the building offers the opportunity for a vibrant sense of community, which will be of very significant benefit to staff, students, alumni and our visitors.
| The balcony area looks out over Randwick Racecourse to the Sydney city skyline. |
The plan for the new Australian School of Business building covered several broad areas, including co-location of academics to foster collegiality, a better quality of teaching space for postgraduate students by fitting out new CATS (Centrally Allocated Teaching Space) rooms within the building, dedicated space for expanding research needs, additional office space and a clear shopfront – meaning the development of a new identity for the School as it moves forward.
The lobbies have been designed as the social focus for each level of the building, containing interactive informal spaces for discussion and gatherings as well as small meeting rooms. The CATS floors (levels one and two) utilise a combination of tiered-seating teaching rooms as well as smaller, flexible, flat-floor teaching spaces, syndicate rooms and informal breakout areas for collaborative learning.
The responsibility for the base building and interior architecture of the structure, which for 50 years was known as the Heffron Building and housed the School of Chemistry, fell to Lahz Nimmo Architects, whilst the external façade was completed by FJMT Architects.
"The building was completely gutted before re-construction began, providing us with wide open floor plates to develop," says Annabel Lahz, Director of Lahz Nimmo Architects. "The refurbishment has resulted in a building which provides a new benchmark in innovative design, environmental sustainability and the provision of world class collaborative teaching and learning spaces. Critical to us as architects was the commitment of the Australian School of Business throughout the design process to the objectives of creating a progressive and innovative environment to take them forward into the future."
One such innovation was the approach to the design of the teaching spaces. "There's quite an established movement of thinking about the philosophy and psychology of learning" says Lahz. "The traditional, teacher-focussed classroom has been replaced with a more student-focussed collaborative learning environment. It's acknowledged that the design and the environment of teaching spaces can facilitate and enhance a student's learning experience."
| The new CATS (Centrally Allocated Teaching Space) rooms will provide postgraduate students with a quality teaching space. |
The building will directly benefit the business world on a number of levels, from the calibre of the graduates, to the improved research facilities and capabilities, to the opportunities for industry to utilise the spaces for various types of functions and off-sites.
"The School has a variety of relationships and partnerships with industry on a number of levels," Westbrook says. "It's around recruitment and employment of graduates, it's around partnering with us in our research agenda and it's also around the provision of advice and support and participation in everything from developing curriculum to making sure that our graduate attributes are the ones that employers are looking for."
"The opportunity to host events in our building is a great one. We've got a stylish business lounge on the top floor, a fabulous entertainment area that can be used for launches, seminars, cocktail parties and receptions. It gives us a physical home in which to host these kinds of events for the first time. If one of our sponsors wants to conduct an off-site strategic planning day or something similar then it's possible for them to use our premises. That, again, deepens the relationship that we have with those companies."
Professor Cameron says the building makes a very strong statement from the University of New South Wales in terms of the importance of business education and research within its environment. "Business for UNSW is represented by the prominent space and profile the Australian School of Business now occupies on the campus," he says. "Not only do we believe that by providing better educational facilities we will attract those students who will enable us to better meet the needs of business in terms of the quality of graduates, but it will also allow us to build closer relationships with business."
There are also great benefits on the academic side, Westbrook says. "Academics are now located in disciplinary groups, so the marketing academics are together, the finance academics are together and the economic academics are together and so on. This is a great achievement of the new building, it facilitates much greater dialogue and the opportunity for collaboration and partnering in research. Our academics need to be physically close to stimulate that kind of interaction and involvement."
| The stylish business lounge will be used for launches, seminars, cocktail parties and receptions. |
"Really we're seeking to achieve a critical mass of academics who are working as a community so they can collaborate," says Professor Cameron. "It's a fundamental concept of a university that it is an academic community of scholars who work together.
Importantly for staff, the building's layout has been planned to maximise access to windows and natural light. Bands of offices are regularly broken up by uncluttered open plan spaces, avoiding long internal corridors. And a mixed mode air conditioning system means windows can be opened, automatically switching the air conditioning in that room off, to save energy and encourage the flow of fresh air.
One factor Lahz is particularly proud of is the environmental sustainability of the building and its spaces. Whilst never taking away from the dramatic, welcoming and professional feel of the interior, it demonstrates several best-practice utilisations of green design.
"The lobbies are naturally ventilated so require no air conditioning. The individual offices are mixed mode where the air conditioner will switch off and on as you open and close the windows, allowing the user to control their environment. On the three upper floors we've given everyone access to natural light. It's not only healthy but it allows people to appreciate the width of the building – in several areas you can see across from one side to the other. Even the internal offices have been designed so they can look diagonally out across the open plan space to natural light,” Lahz explains.
Whilst completely modernising the building the architects were conscious of its history, as it was built in the 1960s and included several features recalling this era. The original terrazzo stairs and balustrades were retained whilst being upgraded for the purpose of safety. Many 1960s buildings contained glass mosaic tiles, so these were used on the feature blade wall in the open stairwells.
"The original stairwells act as voids, providing a continuous physical connection through the six levels of the building. The tonal shades of the mosaic tiles create texture and depth and provide a dramatic gradation as they raise up through the building to the ceremonial top of the School," Lahz says. "The interiors have consciously been designed to bypass fads and fashion and to provide a sophisticated and timeless environment. This has been achieved through a fairly neutral black, grey and white colour palette."
Interestingly, the new building has encouraged staff and alumni to look backwards as well as forwards. Westbrook, who has regular contact with alumni from AGSM and the Faculty of Commerce and Economics, who are now working around the globe, says many have wonderful memories of the days when educational life was more spartan.
| The building's layout maximises access to windows and natural light. |
"For those whose history with the university spans 40 years or longer, their educational experience was in a temporary hut on the western campus. It was a bleak landscape," Westbrook smiles. "So now one of the terrific things about my job is having the opportunity to bring alumni back to this new facility. When they visit they're absolutely blown away, but some of them feel that having earned their education inside a hut is still a badge of honour."
The School is using this opportunity to forever record its past. Westbrook is working with an archivist to find, capture and present as many images as possible of the Faculty of Commerce and Economics, and AGSM, in their earliest days. One of the opportunities the School has now that it has moved into its new home, she says, is to use the building to tell the School's collective history.
Back in the present, the excitement surrounding the move into the School's new headquarters is infectious now that the sawdust has been swept up, the paint has dried and the boxes are unpacked. "It's given the Australian School of Business a corporate headquarters that looks and feels like it should, like a leading business School," Westbrook concludes. "We wanted this facility to be reflective of who we are and who we want to be, which is the leading business School in Australia and the region. I think the facilities in the new building really push us up to that level. On an international level, when compared to the world's leading business Schools, it feels outstanding."