Monash Architecture School Fitout

The Monash School of Architecture is the first new architecture school to open in Australia in 30 years. Curved along Dandenong Road in south-eastern suburban Melbourne is Monash University's Building F, now the modernist architectural shell of the new architecture school fitted out in its entirety by WSH Architects. The design is one which stresses flexibility in studio teaching spaces. The brief included two studios, one very large for flexible programs, another enclosed; staff offices; a CAD/CAM lab; and a series of meeting rooms and casual spaces.

The most striking and formative aspect of the school is the way its studio walls loft in section. A variety of 'pedagogical scenarios' were identified (presentations, seminars, one-on-one critiques, workshops, exhibitions, and more casual situations) and catered for by a variety of creased non-orthogonal sections, which occur along the walls of the school where appropriate. Where exhibitions might be put on, the faceted walls clad with durable rubber sheet and bulletin board are largely flat and vertical; in the corridors the wall pulls into itself to form a bench; and where workshops, presentations, or critiques might be held, the wall is both a pin-up board and a desk, or a plinth for models. Where the lofting creases of the flexible studio walls start, the glassed-in CAD/CAM lab is shown off, visible from the skybridge entrance of the building connecting Building F to the Caulfield Campus' Art and Design flagship building, by Denton Corker Marshall. In other words, the flexibility of the school is programatically expressed in form rather than left to the interpretation of the visitor and user; and caters to the requirements of space unique to architectural studios.

Similarly, just as the boundaries between education and practice should be flattened in universities, the clear distinction of teaching space and circulation melts away in the Monash School. As the wall lofts from one programatic section to another, the main studio more or less fades into casual seating of the hallway rather than ending abruptly at double-loaded corridors - encouraging a mixing of different classes and research streams, collegiality and the accidental meetings which forward thinking universities must recognise are of great value to education in any faculty. It would be fair to say that universities like MIT, which was the first to provide much of its course content free of charge online, are evidence that the source of one's education is the company one keeps and the conversations one has at the instution, at least as much as the literature.

The fitout of the school is itself a lesson in intervention architecture. The hanging ceilings of the original building were removed to didactically expose services, which are beautifully uplit from the overhead cable trays. The lofting walls terminate below the services, fittingly situating the new interior in the modernist shell. The interior by WSH Architects is a bold statement of the new school's ambition, and a manifest example of contemporary architecture relating to the modernism of yesteryear. +

1. The internal columns, which establish a modernist grid that yields to the curve of Dandenong Road, are painted in exuberant pinks and oranges. 2 & 3. Small break-out spaces provide social and discussion spaces, but are not completely divorced from the studio. 4. The distinction between studio teaching space and circulation is blurred. 5. Students enter the architecture school with the CNC Lab to the right.

PHOTOGRAPHY by Peter Bennetts