Project Details
RMIT University TCF & L Building is a new 5, 200 sqm three storey building which contains delivery areas for textile, clothing, footwear and leather programs. The building accommodates the relocation of textile facilities from Pascoe Vale to the RMIT Dawson Street/Brunswick Campus.
The project is significant due to its use of paneled timber as the façade material. The western red cedar façade creates an individual appearance that changes with varying light conditions reminiscent of the woven fabric produced by the building users.
The builder, architect and sub-contractor worked as a team to develop this new building technology. The façade is also environmentally responsive due to its incorporation of passive solar temperature control through a double skin facade.
The School of Textiles, designed by H2o architects with Bates Smart Architects, is arguably the biggest contemporary timber clad building in Australia.With the School of Textiles, H2o architects have used a panellised western red cedar system to cover what would otherwise have been no more than a pragmatic institutional building for the teaching of textile design and making.
The school is essentially divided into two distinct halves, with one side containing large floor spaces for textiles weaving machinery and the other for smaller teaching studio spaces, administration and other services. The impressive central corridor, with a sloping white blade wall that traverses its length, acts as the school’s main connection space via a series of five bridges on each level between the two halves of the building.
With the exception of the building’s ground level, which has been left as raw precast concrete, the whole of the 5,200 square metre facility has been clad with western red cedar panels, applied as a pattern not unlike that of woven fabrics. And the effect is visually dynamic, with the building appearing to change colour almost constantly with the varying light conditions of the day. The cedar, which has been left untreated, will eventually weather to a silky grey.
Designed to also achieve passive solar temperature control, the building is only partially air conditioned. H2o architects worked closely with the builder, engineers, the Timber Promotion council and leading north European researchers in timber façade systems to develop an environmentally responsive method of construction for buildings of this type.
Passive solar temperature controls are achieved in the building through "double skins" either side of a thermal chimney that limits the transfer of heat to the internal fabric of the building.
Aside from their obvious decorative function, the timber panels act as a rain screen protecting an underlying moisture membrane. A gap between them allows circulation of air that not only helps to dry the timber, but aids with the cooling of the façade. The double skin also allows for the draining of any excess moisture that may get through the timber.
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