RMIT New Academic Street

BACKGROUND: New Academic Street is a major project by RMIT University to reinvigorate 4 existing buildings to reconfigure the heart of their campus and dramatically transform the ‘student experience’. Minifie Van Schaik (where Paul Minifie and Jan Van Schaik are Directors) was in a team led by Lyons Architecture (Carey Lyon) on this $220 million project. Other practices involved were NMBW, Harrison White and Maddison Architects. CONTRIBUTION: The project achieved the idea of integrating RMIT with Melbourne through laneways, streets, entrances and balconies; its innovation lies in the way it offers students a truly vivid city-like experience. NAS is a distinct endeavour in that it brought five architectural and one landscape design practice into a consortium to repurpose old buildings and infill gaps in the existing scheme, in a highly diverse manner. Lyon oversaw the overall project and assigned discreet sections to each architecture firm. Minifie and van Schaik designed the new entry beneath the Edmond and Corrigan building, and external balcony and stair, the renovation of the Kaleide Theatre and gym areas and the Gillespie building; these elements have a discreet architectural language in which their interest in pop-semiotics can be seen to leverage geometric language and mathematical tropes. The jury recognised the project as having ‘a unique design collaboration in which the individual design work of each practice aggregates into a genuine architectural and educational diversity.’ SIGNIFICANCE: NAS received 6 awards at the 2018 Victorian Architecture Awards by the Australian Institute of Architects: the Victorian Architecture Medal; Melbourne Prize — Joint Winner; The Henry Bastow Award for Educational Architecture; The Joseph Reed Award for Urban Design; Sustainable Architecture Award; and Interior Architecture Award. It also won the Gold Medal at the 2018 Melbourne Design Awards. It has received extensive critical reviews in national and local media.