RMIT New Academic Street / Lyons

RMIT New Academic Street / Lyons - Exterior PhotographyRMIT New Academic Street / Lyons - Interior PhotographyRMIT New Academic Street / Lyons - Interior Photography, Beam, WindowsRMIT New Academic Street / Lyons - Exterior PhotographyRMIT New Academic Street / Lyons - More Images+ 34

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RMIT New Academic Street / Lyons - Exterior Photography

Text description provided by the architects. RMIT’s New Academic Street (NAS) is a major project that completely transformed the ‘heart’ of RMIT University’s city campus, and radically redefined its education and student experience. The project brief included over 30,000m² of refurbished space in four existing buildings, together with three new buildings totaling approximately 6,000m². The project design is a collaboration between Lyons, MvS Architects, NMBW Architecture Studio, Harrison & White, and Maddison Architects, all of whom are university alumni.

RMIT New Academic Street / Lyons - Exterior Photography
RMIT New Academic Street / Lyons - Exterior Photography
© Tess Kelly

For contemporary universities, the student social experience of the campus is equally significant to a student’s overall education as traditional learning or academic spaces. The NAS project takes this paradigm shift and develops it into an architectural and urban design proposition, that is specific to RMIT’s city-based campus with all the diversity of experience that the city offers. Our team proposed that this diversity could be achieved through a unique project design collaboration, in which the individual design work of each practice combines into a genuine architectural and educational diversity.

RMIT New Academic Street / Lyons - Interior Photography, Beam, Windows
RMIT New Academic Street / Lyons - Image 39 of 39
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RMIT New Academic Street / Lyons - Interior Photography, Stairs
© Tess Kelly

The project also makes the previously shuttered away campus visible on the street by opening-up visual connections to new activity spaces and bringing the educational life of the university directly into the space of the city. Broad new stairs and laneways further enhance these connections and link to student learning, student services, and study spaces. New hospitality and retail spaces are integrated into the project and are curated to support student experience and culture.

RMIT New Academic Street / Lyons - Exterior Photography
RMIT New Academic Street / Lyons - Interior Photography, Beam

A key component is the major expansion and reconfiguration of RMIT’s city campus library. Book stacks were reduced by 50% and student study spaces increased by 200% including places for solo study, noisy group work, quiet group work, and social learning. The design of these diverse spaces was shared across each of the collaborating design practices, to create, even within the library itself, a diversity of architectural and educational spaces.

RMIT New Academic Street / Lyons - Interior Photography

These spaces – a series of discrete rooms - respond to different educational ‘modes’ over the course of the semester, from project-based learning to quiet individual study. These diverse spaces open for extended hours for students living in compact apartment buildings surrounding the campus who use them as an extension of their living space. A student kitchen, located at the most prominent corner of the site, also provides extended hours of access to food and drink.

RMIT New Academic Street / Lyons - Interior Photography, Windows, Beam
RMIT New Academic Street / Lyons - Interior Photography, Dining room, Table, Chair

New learning spaces engage with the city and campus by opening out to balconies and rooftop gardens to provide students with access to landscapes and fresh air. All new spaces are designed to act as social or learning spaces, allowing students to define their experience of the campus. At the heart of the redevelopment a new student services hub, RMIT Connect provides an integrated model for delivering student services, using technology to provide consultations with students on an individual ‘side by side’ or ‘person to person’ basis. Through these strategies, the student experience is transformed through new learning spaces, and is bound up with the life of the city; made both more open and visible.   

RMIT New Academic Street / Lyons - Interior Photography

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Project location

Address:Corner Franklin and Swanston Streets, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia

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Location to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.
About this office
Cite: "RMIT New Academic Street / Lyons" 01 Oct 2020. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/948834/rmit-new-academic-street-lyons-architects> ISSN 0719-8884

皇家墨尔本理工大学新学术街 / Lyons

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