Sir Llew Edwards Interior Architecture

The space contains several novel elements in its specification. Before construction, and after extensive consideration of the kind of activities required, the general arrangement of the space was documented by Hamilton Wilson (of Wilson Architects). This generic plan became the basis for the detailed design work carried out KIRK.

KIRK received a deferred brief for the project and completed the concept design for the interiors during the early building shell construction phases. This allowed for some ‘on the fly’ reworking of the building shell to suit and enhance this new interior program.

In planning the spatial aspects, KIRK first considered the pedagogy, which was determined to be primarily a Lecture profile, with the didactic mode taking up 80% of the time. The Cohort in this mode was to be 100 students. The remaining 20% of time was considered for small group discussion with a cohort of four.

In response, the design specified a tiered theatre but with a double row of desks per tier and swivel chairs on castors. This would allow collaboration between groups of four with two in each row of the double tier. To accommodate this, the rear desk was made wider, and the desktop tablet displays were mounted on swivels. In addition, care was taken to provide an adequate circulation zone.

The level one and two interiors consist of three seminar rooms, a small lecture theatre and two specialized teaching spaces - the Collaborative Learning Centre (CLC), and the Advanced Concept Teaching Space (ACTS). The CLC and ACTS are technology-intensive, specialized concept teaching spaces. The CLC is the third generation collaborative learning space to be built by the University, and the ACTS is a world-first space. Both the CLC and the ACTS are designed to facilitate both a didactic and collaborative learning mode, which is facilitated by reconfigurable and ‘wired’ custom-designed joinery.