University of Queensland Andrew N. Liveris Building

This project’s design envisages a truly sustainable future.

Lyons + m3architecture won the competition to design the new Andrew N. Liveris Building, which includes significant space assigned for the School of Chemical Engineering.

The design concept focuses on creating a physical environment and identity that will allow the School to reinforce its distinctive strengths – outwardly open and transparent, and inwardly intense and focused.

The idea for the exterior of the building is the confluence between Chemical Engineering and the campus itself – a campus with stoic sandstone origins becoming increasingly glass with each new building addition. This evolution is due to advances in technology involving the work of Chemical Engineers, amongst others. This metamorphosis from sand to glass, is used metaphorically to make a building that simultaneously acknowledges its time, place and role as the home for Chemical Engineering.

A key trait of the School is its culture – one based on open and collaborative relationships between students, teachers, researchers and the wider industry.

This openness is linked by a sense of shared discovery – whether students and staff in learning environments, or researchers and industry in proof-of-concept experimental spaces.

Open connecting stairs, shared collaborative spaces and blurred and overlapping boundaries between learning, research and industry, are the hall marks of the project.

The building is as much about the campus as the School – it has the potential to join the precinct together as a campus hub at the crossroads between Chemistry and Engineering.

The project allows the School to continue to evolve, while opening up opportunities to discover its future direction. It will amplify the School’s profile as a hub of chemical engineering leadership in the Asia Pacific region, within the city of Brisbane, and advance its connectedness and profile on the global stage.

 

On the land of the Turrbal and Jagera peoples. 

 

“From the start, we wanted this building to emulate what we, as chemical engineers, are able to do. We connect things. Complex problems become simpler problems – we break them down to become new, innovative solutions.”

Professor Justin Cooper-White
Head of School
School of Chemical Engineering
University of Queensland

Images Christopher Frederick Jones