Well I thought I would break with my rule of not talking about my day to day work for da man to show you some photographs of the L5 Building at the University of NSW as it is the first project finished by our team since I have been there. I should stress that I had an extremely small role in this project - doing bits here and there when needed and really had nothing to do with its overall rad.

It is a building that is characterised by a rigourous and relentless order. This is partly in response to highly ambitious programmatic requirements whereby as much is squeezed into as little partly due to its urban condiditon.

It sits on Anzac Parade, one of Sydney’s major arterial roads, and a robust, tough, structural facade gives the building an urban scale, rhythm and order. The march of the facade is mediated by an inversion of the classical order - shortest on bottom, tallest on top and by the alternating inflection of the glazing.

At the entry the facade is pulled back and a large stair leads up the public courtyard. The courtyard is the organising device that ties together the building’s three distinct occupants; teaching spaces in the podium below the courtyard (they’re students, stick em undergournd!), academics in the shorter tower to the rear and the National ICT Australia research group in the tower on the street.

Where possible the seemingly unattainable goal of moving academics - who are unable to be geniuses without four wall surrounding them - out of offices and into open plan has been partially achieved and sets a new precedent for the university.

Plan at Courtyard Level.

Section.

The people responsible (as I think, off the top of my head, in the order they enter my head):
Andrew Cortese, Ian Goodbury, Namste Burrell, Barbara Vourakis (the design powerhouse whose work managed to convince the university to put aside its campus wide graphical guidelines in order to be replaced by Helvetica Fat), Lawrence Nield, Matthew Bennett, Craig Burns, etc.

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All photographs shown above by John Gollings.