Murdoch University’s flagship academic building Boola Katitjin has been honoured at the 2023 National Architecture Awards.
Announced last night at National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, the building’s architects, Lyons with Silver Thomas Hanley, The Fulcrum Agency, Officer Woods Architects (WA), and Aspect Studios, received both the Daryl Jackson Award for Educational Architecture and the National Award for Sustainable Architecture.
The collaborative effort was praised by the judges: “It is no easy feat to bring together many design minds and achieve a clear solution, but Boola Katitjin is an exemplar,” the Australian Institute of Architects judges said.
The building was commended as a bold and transformative addition to Murdoch University’s Perth campus and was noted for its connection to Country and nods to the original campus buildings designed by eminent Western Australian architect Gus Ferguson.
“Its name – in Noongar language, Boola Katitjin means ‘many facets and many levels of learning’ – aptly captures the layering and flexibility that this building offers,” the judges said.
Boola Katitjin successfully integrates its design brief in a solution that is striking, elegant, flexible, inclusive and certainly of its place.”
Sustainability was front and centre of the design of the largest mass-engineered timber building in Western Australia, earning it 6-Star Green Star certification, and earlier this year the top architectural honour, George Temple Poole Award, at the WA Architecture Awards.
Murdoch University Vice Chancellor Professor Andrew Deeks said last night’s accolades were further confirmation the new building will serve as a catalyst for growth and innovation as the university evolves.
“Boola Katitjin is more than a building, it is a space inside and out, that embodies the values upon which the university was established such as inclusivity and concern for the environment,” he said.
“Boola Katitjin is a visceral statement about our future and my thanks and congratulations go to the architects and everyone involved in bringing it to life."
Jury Citations
The Daryl Jackson Award for Educational Architecture
Boola Katitjin, Lyons with Silver Thomas Hanley, The Fulcrum Agency and Officer Woods Architects (WA)
Boola Katitjin is a bold and transformative addition to Murdoch University’s Perth campus on Noongar Country. Its name – in Noongar language, Boola Katitjin means “many facets and many levels of learning” – aptly captures the layering and flexibility that this building offers. The project is a successful collaboration between Lyons and Silver Thomas Hanley, Officer Woods, The Fulcrum Agency and Aspect Studios. It is no easy feat to bring together many design minds and achieve a clear solution, but Boola Katitjin is an exemplar.
The structure is a 180-metre-long bridge that traverses 13 metres in height over three levels, from the campus’s well-loved Bush Court to the north down to the adjacent Harry Butler Institute and southern carpark. It forms a new, grand southern entry to the campus, providing universal access to students, visitors and staff, and creating a beautiful three-storey verandah space to the west that links to the grand plaza on the northern side of the building.
The building section and language nods to the campus buildings designed by eminent Western Australian architect Gus Ferguson, while the structure is a showcase for sustainability. It is the largest mass-engineered timber building in Western Australia and, embedded with technology optimized for student learning, is 6-Star Green Star-certified. The ends of the building are activated with a kiosk and student central area that draw people in and through. Each level offers digitally immersive learning spaces, computer labs, teaching and staff spaces and breakout spaces – all with easy access and views of the external environment.
Boola Katitjin successfully integrates its design brief in a solution that is striking, elegant, flexible, inclusive and certainly of its place.
National Award for Sustainable Architecture
Boola Katitjin, Lyons with Silver Thomas Hanley, The Fulcrum Agency and Officer Woods Architects (WA)
Housing general teaching and study areas, Boola Katitjin sets out to create a new face for Murdoch University. In addition to providing a much-needed connection between the newly established southern arrival point and the spiritual heart of the campus, Bush Court, the building also aims to create an equitable path of travel across the 13 vertical metres between them. With sustainability front and centre of the design, this building straddles the two levels with the feel of an oversized timber warehouse for learning.
Designed to embrace the often-harsh Perth climate and also protect from it, Boola Katitjin offers a generous covered space for open-air ceremonial events that were not possible before now. On the building’s inviting northern façade, modular bays are clearly evidenced through the expressed CLT structure.
This structure, which gives the building a warm, barn-like feel, reduces the project’s overall embodied carbon by 55 percent compared to equivalent concrete buildings. Informal student areas use a mixed-mode ventilation system (with natural ventilation used most of the time) and the massive gable roof incorporates industrial-scale renewable energy production via a 450-kilowatt solar system. Combined with low-energy systems, these measures have reduced the building’s operational energy footprint by approximately 90 percent (compared to a reference building), and gained it 6-Star Green Star certification.
Boola Katitjin tests some original ideas in environmental and social sustainability; it will be interesting to see how students and staff respond to and interact with these in the years to come.