Next Project

Frontier Urbanism

Part 2 Project 2003
Kelvin Ho
Tamsin Hanke
University of Sydney | Australia
Frontier Urbanism – A Student's Centre for the University of Sydney.

The increasing expansion of the campus during the last 30 years has made the possibility of using traditional campus building types less plausible. The evident fragmentation of the communal form is an indication that the campus has become part of another entity, the urban.
The campus is composed of diverse formal and programmatic elements and events. Sited within a landscape condition, but framed within a wider urban context, the overlapping of events - cultural, recreational, residential, educational and commercial, creates a richness both in plan and section. Similarily, the juxtaposition of the formal conditions and circulation patterns evident in the campus structure, transperant vs opaque, strict vs playful, direct vs indirect, massive vs delicate, provides a palette from which to construct a representation of university life as a student, both intellectually and socially.

Kelvin Ho
Tamsin Hanke


In this project a three dimensional re-drawing of the largely landscaped campus literally re-casts it as a model of the urban. The dense block of the student's centre becomes a repository for all aspects of campus life, physical as well as programmatic. Elements of traditional campus life such as public spaces, cafes, lecture and concert halls are evident, but also are elements of consumer life-style which have infiltrated the spatial types of the campus in general, and the student centre building in particular. This proposal looks for a combination of the dense city block and the traditional campus garden path. Landscape elements, infrastructure and smaller building blocks are incroporated into the implied three dimensional grid in a manner which resists traditional architectural & moral heirachies.

Tutor(s)

2003
• Page Hits: 3643         • Entry Date: 12 September 2003         • Last Update: 12 September 2003