News

RMIT CIOB student members from left: John Moran, Georgina Spooner, Matthew Weller, Lavanya Kanagaratnam (BMC), Steve Ellis (CIOB + BMC), Damien Sibio, Jemima Scally, Mark Breda and William Nie.

CIOB conducted a Members Only Site Visit to the RMIT Swanston Academic Building (SAB) on Monday 22nd August and was attended by the above RMIT CIOB student members.

The SAB is an educational facility of about 34,000sqm over 11 levels. The building wraps around the Oxford Scholar Hotel on the corner of Swanston and A’Beckett Streets and has frontages to Swanston Street, Stewart Street and A’Beckett Street.

It provides twelve tiered lecture theatres ranging from 90-360 seats, including a Cinema facility, as well as other formal teaching and learning spaces and academic and general office accommodation. The service basement accommodates bicycle parking and facilities, loading dock, grey water and rain water tanks, with access from Stewart Street.

It also provides retail and pedestrian activated frontages to Swanston Street, A’Beckett Street and Stewart Street with the design providing multiple ground level pedestrian connection points from all street frontages.

The building is designed to be open and attractive to the general public as well as RMIT’s staff and students and features a central circulation atrium connecting from Level 2 to Level 11, and communal student spaces at each level of the building feature open balconies.

The project will achieve a Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) 5 star Green Start accreditation using the Education V1 Tool Design component.

Additionally the project encompasses the refurbishment of the upper levels of the Oxford Scholar Hotel to a “cold shell” to enable fit-out as educational support facilities with direct access and se4rvices connections to the adjacent SAB building. Lower levels of the building are currently tenanted, and this pub facility will continue to operate throughout the works.

The project is scheduled for completion in November 2012.

The CIOB wishes to thank Brookfield Multiplex for this opportunity.