Swanston Academic Building

The Swanston Academic building is an RMIT building designed by the architecture firm Lyons and is located on Swanston Street in Melbourne across from Peter Corrigan designed building 8 and ARM's Storey Hall. Construction began in September 2010 and was completed in September 2012. The budget for the SAB was $200,000,000. The new building contains 35,000 square metres (380,000 sq ft) of floor space, is 11 storeys high (including basement) and provides 6 large lecture theatres for students. The colourful building is intended to reflect the cities surroundings in the façade. “The idea is to wear the ‘cloak’ of the city”. (Carey Lyon)
Before the SAB building was built, there was another proposal for a sports and recreation center that was to occupy the site. This new building would also be designed by Lyons Architects and would provide a large sports hall and allied facilities, including a gymnasium, change-rooms and health consulting suites. The hall would have had three indoor sports courts for daily use (adaptable for volleyball, badminton, netball and basketball) and is also intended to be a venue for elite sporting competitions, university ceremonies and student examinations. The building was to accommodate for 2600 people. The building was a tube that followed the gentle fall of the land.
The building's interior was intended to be seen from the street as a public spectacle, which would reveal the university. The glass façade was to be sand blasted and seraphic printed to achieve patterning. The building was to be a contained public space.
The current SAB by Lyons architects’ eventually replaced this design.
The SAB has achieved a 5 star Green star rating. Featuring a water harvesting system, water from the rooftop is collected and used for the flushing of the toilets. Horizontal atriums allow no natural light to filter through the building, reducing the need for electrical lighting. Other ESD features include:
The defining element for Lyons design for the Swanston Academic Building was its central site to Melbourne's CBD, which influenced its footprint and form. 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.” Predominant colours of Melbourne were derived from a survey, which has been reflected in the colour palette of the SAB. Lyons has connected the Swanston Academic Building to the rest of the RMIT campus by designing it with “a sense of openness, transparency and energy". When designing the layout for the Swanston Academic Building, Lyons consulted extensively with a wide range of academic staff to gather information about learning and teaching methodologies (both current and future), including learning and teaching spaces that would aid their teaching practice.
Media related to Swanston Academic Building at Wikimedia Commons