Sir Zelman Cowen Award for Public Buildings

Jury Verdict
A major work of ceremonial architecture, The Scientia has transformed the University of New South Wales campus and given it a remarkably poetic and emblematic focus. 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.