Monash Clayton facilitates another grand design gesture
Monash University's Clayton campus will receive yet another noteworthy academic building, this time by way of the new Monash Biomedical Learning and Teaching Building (BLTB)
Joining a string of highly meritorious contemporary designs across the campus, BLTB is another design feather in the cap of Monash's Clayton campus which has undergone intensive redevelopment over the past five years. Denton Corker Marshall has created the new building which is valued in excess of $100 million.
Research Way's old Pharmacology building has been demolished as the process to select a builder continues. Eventually, BLTB will cater for undergraduate students studying biomedical sciences.
Spanning 10,000sqm of new built form, BLTB's facade will carry a distinctive glazing to its eastern and western flanks.
The new building incorporates an innovative pedagogical solution in four Flexi Labs. The ‘L’ shaped labs wrap around a central glazed satellite prep area providing smaller scaled, more personable lab space for cohorts of 60, 120 or interlinked space for up to 240 students, visually connected as one.
This enables teaching and learning of multiple subjects concurrently and independently in a uniquely Monash solution.
The facility also includes a 1,200sqm informal Learning Hub accommodating 440 students. With an average of 90 informal learning seats per floor, the Hub provides spaces for quiet, self-directed learning as well as, larger, more active group settings.
Denton Corker Marshall
BLTB is the latest in Monash University's capital expenditure program that has seen vast swathes of the Clayton campus redeveloped in recent years. Major builds delivered include six separate student housing buildings, New Horizons, the Green Chemical Futures building, The Ian Potter Centre for Performing Arts and the Learning and Teaching Building.
The latter duo is currently under construction, with the Learning and Teaching Building targeting a Green Building Council of Australia’s ‘5-star As-Built’ rating.
Designed by John Wardle Architects, it includes more than 60 formal and informal learning and teaching spaces set above an extensive basement car park and also delivers a new transport interchange and frontage to Wellington Road.
Likely to grace the Clayton campus next is a new Technology Education Building, with Grimshaw Architects reportedly involved with the design.
