Layered Connectivity

Connectivity creates community, exchange, and campus life.

University of Tasmania Forestry Building

Education and ScienceIn Progress

AU

The project objective is to revitalise, adapt and activate the University of Tasmania (UTas) Forestry building, providing a new CBD location for the proposed anchor tenants of the College of Business and Economics (CoBE), School of Law and a component of University College, wrapping a refurbished winter garden.

The Forestry building is to be a highly connected, porous building of welcoming spaces that invite business and community access and use of its facilities whilst honouring the heritage component of the site. The building is to meet the operational, functional and aspirational requirements of key stakeholders. An urban design strategy to deliver on the sustainability principle is to expose the rivulet through a landscaped rear plaza and winter garden, connecting Brisbane Street to a future green spine on Melville Street.

Talk to Sarah Ball about University of Tasmania Forestry Building

Project details

The design team have digested the University’s masterplan for Hobart CBD and have formulated three project pillars for the Forestry building that build off the extensive thinking already carried out by UTAS and their team.

  1. Building as a campus
    The building will be more akin to a campus than a single building, containing various spaces for students to exchange ideas and share in the University of Tasmania experience.
  2. Found Conditions
    The site has a variety of unique ‘found buildings’ with their own histories and palettes that provide the grounding for a rich Interior design response. They provide unique identities to distinguish the various neighbourhoods within the site with a strong connection back to the overarching design narrative.
  3. Layered connectivity
    Connectivity both inside and to the broader campus and city is essential. Connectivity creates community, exchange, and campus life.
Location
Hobart, Australia
Client
University of Tasmania
Size
14,000 square meters
Expected Completion
Q3 2025
Collaborators
Arup
Awards
  • 2024 World Architecture Festival (WAF) – Future: Higher Education & Research, Winner
  • 2024 WAFX Award – Building Technology, Winner

Talk to Sarah Ball about University of Tasmania Forestry Building

Forestry Dome

“There’s an expansive sustainability story that we are feeding into the many layers of this project. For the Forestry Building we are looking ahead 50-100 years and thinking about how the choices we make now are going to play out then.”

Phoebe Settle, Associate, Woods Bagot

Early site photographs.

Journal

Designing for deconstruction: Woods Bagot and Arup look to a building’s end-of-life for University of Tasmania project

For their collaboration on the University of Tasmania’s Forestry Building, design studio Woods Bagot and engineering and sustainability consultancy Arup are extending the horizon lines of architecture’s impact, factoring in a building’s end-of-life. This is design for deconstruction.  

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