RMIT SWANSTON ACADEMIC BUILDING

The Swanston Academic Building (SAB) is an RMIT building designed by the architecture firm Lyons and is located on Swanston Street, Melbourne, across from other notable architectural landmarks: Peter Corrigan-designed building 8 and ARM’s Storey Hall.

RMIT University has three campuses in Melbourne, Australia, two campuses in Vietnam and a centre in Barcelona, Spain. The University's student population of 82,000 includes 28,000 international students, of whom 17,600 are taught outside Australia (almost 7,000 at RMIT Vietnam).

Construction of SAB began on September 2010 and was completed in September 2, 2012. The budget for the SAB was $200,000,000. The new building contains 35,000 square metres of floor space, is 11 storeys high (including basement) and provides 6 large lecture theatres for students.

The building has state of the art facilities for students and also has a 5 star green star rating, meaning the building is very environmentally sustainable. The extremely colourful building is intended to reflect the cities surroundings in the façade. “The idea is to wear the ‘cloak’ of the city”.

Adrian Stanic (Lyons Architectural Director and RMIT alumnus) said in a media release (22/10/2010): “We saw the site as a focal point of the city and looked at how the SAB could create a dialogue with the other landmark buildings that define Melbourne. The process involved mapping lines from the site to these buildings. Using these lines we then created a computerized algorithm that generated the three-dimensional shapes and form of the building. We also put a boom lift on site and hoisted architectural photographer Dianna Snape up to photographically capture the vistas from the 11 levels of the building. The best viewpoints then became the location for the student ‘portals’ on each level that connect student activities inside the building with the surrounding cityscape. In this way we have created a design that integrates the building into the very heart of Melbourne architecturally, but also reflects and embraces the broader architectural legacy of the city.”

This post is part of the Geometric Friday meme.