Two heritage buildings, reconnected after 25 years of silence.
As the first stage of the redevelopment of the University of Tasmania's Domain Campus, we were engaged to undertake feasibility and concept design work for two heritage-listed buildings that had sat largely unused for a quarter of a century. The single-storey Graphics Building and the double-storey Language Arts Resources Centre had last been occupied by the Adult Studies Centre before falling dormant. The brief was to bring both buildings back to life as teaching spaces, student facilities and staff administration offices - uses that demanded modern amenities the existing buildings could not provide on their own.
Our response was a modest contemporary brick extension to the LARC Building. It housed new bathrooms and end-of-trip facilities for both buildings, but its real purpose was circulatory: the site sits across three distinct levels, and the extension resolved the vertical movement between them, connecting the two heritage buildings into a single, legible sequence. With that connection in place, the buildings could operate together - meeting rooms, staff offices and flexible student workspaces arranged as complementary uses across the two structures. The extension was deliberately restrained, allowing the heritage fabric to remain the primary presence on the site.
