rmit building 45

12. RMIT BUILDING 45

Originally a rubber and tyre warehouse built in the early 1950s, and later the RMIT Union dental service. Our project was to recycle this building once again; as studio and workshop spaces for Architecture and Design…

In doing this, we sought to make use of and underline the straightforward urban qualities of this corner building as an economical space for student use, with a direct interface to the public realm at street level.

The building is an annexe to the main Architecture school, separate from the main central campus. Architecture students engage with the city and with the technical and training sections of the university as they walk to and from and mill around outside.

The building is shared between higher education and TAFE departments. Different groups of students arrive from different directions. Sharing of facilities is necessary and encouraged. An ‘as-found’ half-basketball court is re-utilised as circulation, making a space where the two groups can mix; and compete with each other at lunchtime games.

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CITY CAMPUS / CITY SPACE

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The allocated brief of four studios and corridor was rearranged into four teaching alcoves of the smallest functional area, so that a nonspecific (and non-bookable) space could be opened up, shared by all and useable by students 24 hours per day.

This configuration allows informal work to carry on while classes are in progress and for both students and staff to move freely between different modes of working and learning, individually or in groups. This is a natural way of working.

The open workspace, and the teaching alcoves which open off it, have something of the character of a studio: a work environment that is familiar and natural to students and architects but difficult to come by in the university. It is not like a classroom or an office, a computer lab, a workshop, or a gallery – but able to be parts of all of these at once.

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FULL / FLEXIBLE

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Walking along Lygon Street, you come across a roller door that was always there – although closed for the past twenty years. A new glass shopfront entry is recessed behind this propped-open screen.

The entrance is a gallery space which leads through to the asfound basketball courtyard, previously a dead-end but now refocused into a primary social mixing space and a place for outdoor events and exhibitions.

This side circulation route was the original truck loading bay and the new works reinstate the through-path linking the public street to the deep campus behind. Re-glazing of existing openings and entrances allows the activities of the studio to engage directly with the street.

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ENTRANCES / GALLERY

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Each semester, the building is transformed into an exhibition venue for student work, with its front door open to Lygon Street. The foyer is not quite large enough for the crowd, so people spill out through the roller door and onto the footpath – opening up the building and making the event visible in the city.

The basketball court surfaces are able to be appropriated for different uses. The entry lobby becomes a bar, the print-room bench a place for preparing food, whiteboard surfaces become screens for projecting onto and exhibition spotlights cast shadows of the crowd onto the frosted glass street windows.

CITY FOYER, EXHIBITION, ACTIVE OCCUPATION

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Design was a process of removal and emptying-out; revealing the original enclosure, and then carefully repairing and putting things back – as little as possible – to accommodate new functions without destroying the original sense of a flexible and tough multi-purpose space.

Considerable effort went into designing-out the paraphernalia that frequently occupies such institutional buildings so that surfaces and spaces could feel ‘empty’: security readers and light switches are mounted on the inside of door jambs, doors can be used as built-in whiteboard surfaces without secondary furniture, and the way in which light fittings are suspended minimises the need for cabling.

New divisions, surfaces, fittings and furniture work with and accentuate the existing structure. Design decisions reflected on the precise way in which one might remove and then intervene in such an environment.

REMOVAL / ADDITION

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RMIT Building 45 NMBW Architecture Studio 2007 - 2008 Project Team Nigel Bertram Lucinda McLean Marika Neustupny with: Ralf Rehak First published Architecture Australia Vol. 98 No.2 March/April 2009 pp73-85 review: Stuart Harrison Architect Victoria Awards 2009 issue, p.37 Awards Architecture Award Public Architecture, Alterations + Additions Australian Institute of Architects (Vic) Awards, 2009 Photography Peter Bennetts

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