Jury Citation
The Biosciences Building at RMIT’s Bundoora campus is a two-storey, 160 metre-long building that, despite its length, sits easily in its site without dominating the neighbouring buildings. It appears to have grown out of the escarpment it inhabits.
The external expression is impressive – the layered facades of etched concrete and glass are elegantly proportioned, complex and richly detailed. Inside low-cost materials such as polycarbonate corridor ceilings and fibreglass are used inventively. The building is made powerful by a complexity of texture and detail, the clever manipulation of light and internal circulation spaces, and a masterly understanding of how to assemble a restricted palette of materials to create memorable architecture.
The program led the architects to adopt a double-loaded linear form that is expressed as seven modules.
The apparent simplicity of this analysis belies the complexity of the functions it contains.
It is a credit to the architects that they were able to realise this building in a fresh and unmannered way. They did it through the subtle manipulation of plan and section to create spatial interest in what might ordinarily have been an unremarkable, low-rise corridor building. And all this at a bargain basement price for a laboratory facility of this sophistication.
Project Credits
RMIT Biosciences Building, Bundoora Campus, Melbourne
Project Architect John Wardle Architects and DesignInc Melbourne. Structural Consultant, Civil Consultant Connell Mott MacDonald. Electrical Consultant, Mechanical Consultant Umow Lai and Associates. Hydraulic Consultant G.
Rimmington & Associates. Landscape Consultant Chris Dance Land Design.
Quantity Consultant Padgham & Partners.
Builder Baulderstone Hornibrook.
Photographer Trevor Mein.
For further coverage see Architecture Australia vol 91 no 1 (January/February 2002), also at www.archmedia.com.au.
