Southbank Hub
“This is much more than a library on a campus for creatives – it’s a place to learn, relax and meet-up. Adding an amphitheatre to the library, as counterintuitive as that seems, has made a new place to perform, debate, and rehearse.”
Adam Pustola, Principal at Lyons
The University of Melbourne’s Southbank Hub embodies the importance of the archival object. The Louise Hanson-Dyer Music Library and the Lenton Parr Music collection are the cornerstones of the design, informing the interior spaces and inspiring architectural features throughout. The significance of the collections is both functional for students and researchers as well as symbolic. It speaks to the importance of a tactile, boutique collection that enables connection with the material object. Here, reading rooms are interwoven with listening booths and display vitrines so rare scores remain touchable while supporting digital research workflows. While other resources move online or are stowed away, this collection creates a distinct, intimate experience for music students and scholars. Student services and diverse teaching and study spaces are effortlessly woven amongst the culturally significant collections, blurring the lines of culture and amenity. Acoustic baffles, soft seating and warm timber tune these areas for rehearsal, quiet reading and critique without separating them. The result is a design that serves and addresses the needs of The University of Melbourne while reserving a space for creativity to flourish well into the future.
Education & Learning
Adam Pustola
Carey Lyon
University of Melbourne, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music
234 St Kilda Rd, Southbank VIC 3006
Located on the traditional lands of the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung people
7,553 square metres
Complete, 2018
The design for Southbank Library came in response to the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music moving the majority of its programs to Southbank in 2019. The library is designed to incorporate the rare collections of the Louise Hanson-Dyer Music Library and the Lenton Parr Music as well as the Visual and Performing Arts Library. Celebrating an extensive collection of books, musical scores, journals and media, the design proposes the contemporary library as a welcoming, scholarly and eccentric place to be. Lyrebird-hued ceilings and interpretive graphics give the collections a clear identity and aid intuitive wayfinding through the floors. The Louise Hanson Dyer Collection is given an identity through architecture on the first level. The vaulting ceiling expresses the colours of the lyrebird which was the name of the journal founded by the collection’s namesake. This architecture extends through the first floor and draws visitors through the collection toward a new ‘terraced forum’. The design places the Lenton Parr Collection alongside informal seating and study tables, symbolically embedding cultural experience in daily university life. Placing display cases beside benches encourages browsing and short, serendipitous encounters with the archive. The informal approach to the collection’s display is intentional, encouraging browsing as if in a bookshop. Listening stations and small-group nooks keep scholarship audible and visible, appropriate for a performing arts campus.
Connecting the campus’ existing configurations both physically and metaphorically was a unique aspect of the brief. One of the design aspirations of the project was to create distinctly new architecture inspired by the four buildings that sit at the junction of the site, each designed from different architectural eras. The site is two connected buildings – the former Centre for Ideas (Minifie Nixon, 2005) and a 1970s student union building. A continuous timber datum and clear portals reconcile these eras, making a single legible route through the hub. Driven by sustainable design principles, the renewal of existing buildings improves energy efficiency and enhances amenity, elevating existing elements, such as the internal courtyard, and establishing new ones just as seamlessly. This adaptive refurbishment preserves the campus grain while upgrading comfort and performance. The project is almost entirely interior spaces designed to reference elements of the performing arts, bringing together the idea of theatre balconies and the vivid colours of the Arts Centre with the profiled ‘warehouse ceilings’ of art galleries, while creating a welcoming environment that transforms an awkward amalgam of buildings. Bridges and courtyard-facing study edges make those connections visible across levels, encouraging longer dwell. The new Southbank Hub explores how the architecture and design of student services and a library can connect and transform the campus, carving out a more social and meaningful place within the tight confines of a city campus. Pathways in the site plan align to neighbouring schools and galleries so everyday movement also knits the precinct together.
From the consolidation of services, to facilitating on campus interactions, the design for Southbank Hub contributes to the student experience of The University of Melbourne. The Hub is designed to be permeable and highly accessible to the entire campus community so it can use it at all times of semester. The transparency of spaces for passive surveillance, relaxed seating and diverse settings encourage student use well into evenings. Street-facing glazing turns help desks and lounges into a visible welcome, improving passive safety after hours. The ground floor is highly porous, offering multiple entries, open social study areas, two large digital teaching and learning studios, a communal kitchen and provision for a small café. These spaces focus on the centralised student services and library counter which operates as a ‘one stop shop’ for all student enquiries. The student services area is designed adjacent to the library making both spaces more accessible and ‘on show.’ The ‘Stop 1’ counter anchors this plane as a single front door, with student services glazed along the main spine for easy sightlines.
A landscaped courtyard that had previously been closed-off from student access is renewed and made a focus of the new library spaces. It provides an accessible outdoor space and ample natural light to the library levels. A unique addition to the library design is the new amphitheatre, encouraging socialising, rehearsal and relaxation. The unique space provides students with a memorable, flexible and playful space for study, conversation or performance. As a terraced forum it supports rehearsal by day and debate after class, extending the library’s role beyond borrowing.
Adam Pustola, Senior Principals, Practice Executive
View Adam's ProfileCarey Lyon, Co-Founders, Practice Executive
View Carey's Profile
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