After 18 months of construction, The University of Technology Sydney’s (UTS) new Engineering and IT Building has topped out at thirteen levels.

Located on the corner of Broadway and Wattle Street in Ultimo, the 44,000sqm building is designed by Melbourne-based architects Denton Corker Marshall.

“This milestone is a great metaphor for how our part of Sydney is fast becoming a creative and cultural hub,” says UTS Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ross Milbourne.

The building’s façade will be clad in aluminium ‘binary screens’, so called because they are perforated with a pattern of ‘1’s and ‘0s’, the base elements of a binary code.

Featuring a wind turbine, solar panel technology, and water recycling, the building is targeting a 5-Star Green Star rating. Wireless sensors that have been installed throughout the building will capture and display energy use and building occupant numbers in real time.

Once completed, the site is expected to accommodate more than 4000 students and staff through a mix of public, teaching and faculty office spaces. Traditional, large lecture theatres will be replaced by smaller collaborative classrooms featuring the latest technology and moveable furniture to facilitate group work.

“The new teaching and learning spaces will facilitate UTS’s Learning 2014 vision which has collaboration and the seamless integration of face-to-face and online learning at its heart,” says Milbourne.

UTS has received both state and federal government funding for the construction of the Broadway Building through a $50 million Education Investment Fund (EIF) grant from the Australian Government Department of Industry, Innovation, Climate Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education. It also received $1.2 million from the NSW Government Department of Trade and Industry’s Science Leverage Funding Program. 

The Broadway Building is the largest of the three state-of-the-art buildings to be completed next year under the university’s City Campus Master Plan, a $1 billion investment in the future of teaching, learning and research at UTS.

Images: UTS