Lyons
(est. 1996, Melbourne)
NMBW Architecture Studio
(est. 1997, Melbourne)
Harrison and White
(est. 2006, Melbourne)
MvS Architects
(est. 1999, Melbourne)
Maddison Architects
(est. 1989, Melbourne)

Led by Melbourne architectural and urban design practice Lyons and created in collaboration with four other architectural practices (NMBW Architecture Studio, Harrison and White, MvS Architects and Maddison Architects), RMIT University’s New Academic Street transformed the heart of the university’s city campus on Wurundjeri Woiwurrung Country. The project brief included over 30,000 square metres of refurbished space in four existing buildings, as well as three new buildings totalling approximately 6000 square metres. A unique collaboration between the five practices, the project continues a legacy of RMIT campus design work undertaken by Percy Everett, Bates Smart and McCutcheon, John Andrews, Edmond and Corrigan and Peter Elliott Architecture + Urban Design.

The style of the existing concrete block buildings on RMIT’s Swanston Street frontage was typical of the 1970s era in which they were originally built. But instead of demolishing the old buildings, the project team sought to understand and include these brutalist structures in the context of the new campus. An original layer of openness at the plaza level was used as a guide, subtracting and revealing in a way that was compatible with the original structural and architectural design, while counterbalancing strategic additions and extensions to increase the design’s openness to the city. A series of four large new civic stairs and pedestrian spaces were also conceived as ‘urban arcades’: semi-public, semi-exterior spaces connecting various parts of the outdoor public realm, from laneways and arcades to passageways through buildings in Melbourne’s CBD.

The architects of the original campus had envisaged the raised level of Bowen Street as an interior plaza and campus centre, complete with freestanding pavilions buttressed by Swanston Street. To achieve this, they demolished a whole side of nineteenth-century buildings lining Bowen Street. The New Academic Street project partially re-established the scale and grain of the former street while maintaining plaza-like scale at ground level for student events.

Completed in 2017, the New Academic Street project won several awards at the 2018 Australian Institute of Architects Awards (Victorian Chapter): the Joseph Reed Award for Urban Design; the Educational Architecture Award; the Allan and Beth Coldicutt Award for Sustainable Architecture; the Melbourne Prize (joint winner with Nightingale 1); and the Victorian Architecture Medal.