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I don't think this has been tried anywhere before in Australia in a building.
The facade here hanging over the streets, these windows here are really,
I think, unique to Australia and Lyons have designed these in such a way
that they create interest, they bring attention to the outside of the building
but also when you're outside the building it's going to be very, I think,
visually stimulating in a way that's going to draw people's attention to well,
what is this building, it looks really interesting.
There's a variety of sustainability elements built into this building,
one of which is the use of water which will take water off RMIT buildings, funnel it under
Swanston Street and back up for usage in this building.
The building itself also reflects the capabilities of RMIT by, if you like,
the design element to it and of course RMIT's moving from being a
University of Technology to a University of Technology and Design.
So this building really reflects that kind of shift.
Whereas the business school are moving into the business and design space, so this building forms
an identity with the sort of business school that we're building.
In the teaching spaces they're open as a university wide teaching available set of spaces.
By and large business would expect to be in here most of the time but up
to 40% of it will also be used by non-business classes in this building.
One of the design features that's unique about this building is the, what's called the student
portal areas and there are some seven or eight of these in different locations in
the building each of which is two-storeys and each of which looks out over
a different vista of the city, each of which connects this building to features
of the city that reinforces the identity of the building being connected
to the city in which it's located and you can see because of the co-location
of this to the main campus.
Its proximity enables that flow across Swanston Street to once again engage with, you know,
what's the premier boulevard of the ... of probably this country.
Building's sitting right on that boulevard that just flows right through
the central spine of the city.
Looking up the street, a hundred yards away, is the Design Hub which is a premier location,
I can't think of another university in Australia that has something like this built
into it. Two blocks further on is the Advanced Manufacturing Precinct
which enables business to connect to a range of production related services.
So we have the capability of where this building's located in such a way that
it really brings together the design capabilities of much of RMIT
and enables this to become very much a strategic space in terms
of how it engages with the other parts of RMIT.