DCM wins university competition

Architect Denton Corker Marshall (DCM) has won the design competition for a new Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology building at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.

The AU$ 170 million (US$ 140 million) building, designed to "strong environmentally sustainable principles", will provide 12 storeys of research laboratories, lecture theatres, seminar rooms, teaching laboratories and academic offices.

The interior of the building is concealed within a skin with a ‘crevasse' providing pedestrian access through the building and connecting to the surrounding area. The building is then covered by four tilted and skewed plates - one for each façade, which form a series of triangular openings at the corners for further access.

According to director john Denton, the surface of each plate is creased to form a series of ‘gills' that "visually reinforce[e] the sense of plate as skin and creating a semi-transparent screen."

Perforating the skin of each plate will be the ‘1's and ‘0s' of binary code of the alphabetical character string for ‘University of Technology Sydney Faculty of Engineering and information Technology'.

The design targets a minimum 5-star Green Star rating, with an energy saving strategy expected to deliver a 30 to 45% energy saving over benchmark tertiary educational buildings with similar functional spaces.