College of Fine Arts Competition ::

Project Description::

Tonkin Zulaikha Greer was shortlisted for this competition to redevelop the University of NSW’s College of Fine Arts campus as a leading international art and design institution. TZG proposed a heterogeneous architecture where contrasting buildings coexist and compliment each other, forming complex and interesting relationships celebrating the multivalency of the creative arts.

The primary meeting places such as the Lecture Theatre, Library, Museum, COFA Space, Cafeteria and Student Common Room have been deliberately disbursed across the site, to spread students and teachers across the limited land area on various different levels. The focal open spaces are each located to key into a different floor level of the main building so that the privilege of connection between interior and open space is not monopolised by one level.

The proposal aims to reorient the COFA Campus onto Oxford Street to form a gateway to the City. It provides generous linked galleries while offering flexible teaching and research space. The careful articulation of the central courtyard and the College circulation are designed to enable an effective and stimulating campus life. A coordinated series of strategic ‘moves’ inform and direct the planning, landscape and architecture, to create a world-class campus focused to the City.