This complex $30 million project involved the construction or upgrading of three buildings on the busy UniSA City West campus on North Terrace in the Adelaide CBD.
While the three buildings share a common theme of a raw industrial appearance with exposed internal services and off-form concrete, each building is architecturally unique.
The Catherine Helen Spence Building was constructed in two portions, the first an upgrading of sections of the existing building, and the second the construction of two additional floors at the southern end of the building. Interesting features include the shear glass southern façade, anchor-shaped joinery with neon lighting to the southern façade, precast elements, anodised aluminium panels to a facade and the information counter at the new entry.
The Dorrit Black Building is a four-storey building with a 1,900 m2 footprint that contains large studio and workshop areas for furniture design, glass blowing, metalwork, photography, plastics, wet laboratories and woodwork. Interesting design features include perimeter glazing with raking glazing on the northern elevation, white precast panels, off-form concrete stairs, external boxed sunshades, raking concrete walls and external steel sculptures.
The Kaurna Building is a three-storey building with a 1,600 m2 footprint that includes large studio facilities with exposed concrete and services, a ground floor gallery and café, and a terrace on Level 5. Interesting features include ground floor perimeter airport doors (which, when opened, present a wall-less appearance), formed voids within the structure, polycarbonate skylights, a glazed shear southern façade and curtain walling, and white precast panels with fins.
All three building were constructed in a busy operational campus environment, with the project teams liaising with the university’s various stakeholders to minimise disruption.
Partly as a result of the success of this work, Built Environs was subsequently contracted to construct the Hawke Building for UniSA.
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