At the University of Sydney, Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS + R) and Billard Leece Partnership (BLP) have partnered to complete a new state-of-the-art educational facility that consolidates clinical, teaching and research functions while respecting the site’s historic significance as a gathering place for the Gadigal people.
A total of 21,500 square meters, the building is strategically positioned near the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and the Charles Perkins Centre and brings together the University’s School of Nursing and Midwifery, the Central Clinical School of the Sydney Medical School, and the Sydney School of Health Sciences. The project also accommodates a library and other components of the Faculty of Medicine and Health.
Visitors are greeted by an open forecourt featuring alcove sandstone seating and a sloping landscape path leading to the entrance. The interior of the main entrance features a light-filled, triple-height space with generous stairs that staddle the interior and exterior while connecting the main floor to the Upper Wakil Garden.
As DS+R partner Benjamin Gilmartin describes, ‘the landscape rises to encompass shared facilities for research and learning, branching out into a three-dimensional network of open spaces connected at every level from inside to outside. At the heart of this network is the Upper Wakil Garden – a multivalent and dynamic reinvention of the campus quad. A ‘Cleave’ within the upper volume of the Susan Wakil Health Building draws light down into the garden throughout the year, while its interlacing circulation acts as connective tissue between academic workplaces and clinical spaces within.’
Around the ‘cleave,’ seminar rooms, clinics, workspaces, a rehabilitation gym and a 350-seat lecture theatre are organized and activated by several indoor and outdoor informal collaboration zones. This central atrium thus maximizes interaction between different disciplines.
The building’s facades are designed to reveal the program organization within. The upper floating teaching space is clad with high-performance shading screens with a vertical rhythm and carefully framed views over the city. By contrast, the open and porous ground floor is expressed with a simple curtain wall glazing system. At the podium, horizontal ceramic panels and aluminium screen evoke the solidity of stone and the lifted strata of the earth beneath.
A site of historic significance, the building is located at the intersection of two waterways that are historically significant for the Gadigal people. As such, the Susan Wakil Health Building was designed as an extension of the landscape that embodies the University’s Wingara Mura design principles.
Arcadia Landscape Architecture designed ‘Gadigal Ground’ as an interpretation of the cycle of healing, stirring the body, mind and soul to reflect the Gadigal people’s approach to healing through the engagement of all the human senses.
