L+S Exhibition

A room in the city:

UTS is building a new Podium to its iconic tower. This new podium gives UTS the opportunity to reinvent its presence along Broadway, in the Sydney and beyond. Lacoste + Stevenson’s design, together with Jean Nouvel’s residential tower, Norman Foster’s commercial buildings, and DCM’s Engineering and IT Faculty Building will create an outstanding precinct along this section of Broadway.

The new podium will create a giant public room open on Broadway. It will not only provide a new main entrance to the university, but a large range of activities that will attract a broad public.

In contrast to the Brutalist architecture of the Tower, the new podium is open and welcoming. It intervenes as an undulating semi-transparent building wrapping the base of the tower.  This is achieved with curved glass and a white frit in the pattern of a forest.  It appears soft and almost pliable like a curtain; its smooth surface blowing inward dramatically to mark the main entrance on Broadway.

At street level, the proposal encourages activestreet edges.  The transparency of the façade will reveal exhibition and public spaces inside the entrance on the ground floor.  The Co-op Book Shop on the corner of Jones Street andthe cinema entrance and café to the east will provide activity along a substantial portion of the street frontage.

Large-scale structural, lace steel columns contribute to the lightness of the building. Their hollow centre allows visual connections between floors, natural ventilation and the light to penetrate deep inside. Vertical circulation will take place inside the columns.  The columns are filled with water for fire rating.

Lacoste + Stevenson’s “Room in theCity” exhibition features conceptual diagrams, perspectives, models and animations.

The exhibition opens on the 4th May at UTS Architecture, Kensington St Warehouse, 50 Kensington St, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia.

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