CSU received first prize for non-residential buildings during an award ceremony held earlier this month at the annual conference of RAIA-NSW country chapter in Ballina, on the NSW North Coast.
The prize was awarded for the CD Blake Lecture Theatre, the largest building in the teaching and learning complex on the Thurgoona Campus.
The unique heating and cooling strategies incorporated into the building make innovative use of the thick, rammed-earth walls, solar panels to heat and cool water that is circulated through the floor, artificial waterfalls for evaporative cooling, geothermal exchange with underground water reservoirs, natural ventilation and night cooling. [See the Thurgoona website for details.]
The University’s Director of Design, Marci Webster-Mannison, said the cutting edge “green” campus demonstrates the University’s ability to develop and build a fully functional environmentally sensitive community.
“The lecture theatre offers a blueprint for the future design for major public buildings,” she said.
Ms Webster-Mannison, who leads the team that designed the site, said Thurgoona “is a developing, dynamic model of how communities can address environmental concerns and sustainable living for decades to come”.
“We brought together the ancient use of rammed earth, modern technologies such as solar heating and environmental control using computers and some careful planning to produce what we believe are the most advanced environmentally sensitive public buildings in Australia,” Ms Webster-Mannison said.
“The Thurgoona Campus demonstrates how architecture and landscape design can relate to lifestyles and the land, based on the responsible use of resources and consideration of the local climate.”
The campus also includes academic offices, smaller lecture theatres and teaching rooms and student accommodation buildings, all constructed of rammed earth, recycled timber and metal and corrugated iron.
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