“Our design creates a new common ground for the University, the Hospital and the Charles Perkins Centre, while respecting the site’s historic significance as a gathering place,” said Benjamin Gilmartin, a partner of DS+R. “The landscape rises to encompass shared facilities for research and learning, branching out into a three dimensional network of open spaces connected at every level from inside to outside.
“At the heart of this network is the Upper Wakil Garden — a multivalent and dynamic reinvention of the campus quad. A ‘cleave’ within the upper volume of the Susan Wakil Building draws light down into the Garden throughout the year, while its interlacing circulation acts as a connective tissue between academic workplaces and clinical spaces within.”
The building accommodates seminar rooms, clinics, workspaces, a rehabilitation gym, a 350-seat theatre and a library. The architects have also designed a series of informal study and collaborative spaces.
The building is bisected by a central atrium. “The key to success and longevity of this building is its principles of designing with nature – drawing light, views, and ventilation, allowing visual transparency across the facilities, designed for active circulation and socialisation with an emphasis on stairs over lifts – creating a healthy workplace and a place of learning of the future,” said BLP principal Raj Senanayake.
The building’s two parts – teach and learning facilities and research workspaces – are delineated through two distinct facade treatments. The upper levels housing workspaces are clad in a facade shading system which the architects say resemble a textile, while the lower levels are clad in horizontal ceramic panels and aluminium screens.
The building is one of the first project to be completed after the university introduced its Wingara Mura Indigenous design principles. The landscape design, by Arcadia Landscape Architecture incorporates the cycles of healing and reflects the Gadigal people’s approach to healing.
“In many ways this environment contributed the unique response to place and building type that became the winning scheme,” Senanayake said. “At the same time, we had to negotiate the challenges of early online collaboration platforms that have now become part of the everyday practice of architecture.”
The building was made possible by a $35 million donation from the Susan and Isaac Wakil Foundation, which was the largest ever gift the university had received.
University of Sydney Chancellor Belinda Hutchinson said, “The opening of the Susan Wakil Health Building during this once-in-a-century global pandemic could not be more timely as it highlights the importance of an agile, innovative and resilient health workforce and the need to think differently to meet the health challenges of our time.”
