Paul Morgan Architects,Melbourne, Australia,Photography:Peter Bennetts

The new engineering workshop by Paul Morgan Architects (PMA) demonstrates the architectural detail in designing a hardworking, functional space for Monash University’s Clayton campus.

Tucked behind a row of low-slung transportable buildings, on the northern edge of Monash University’s Clayton campus, the Building 40 workshop is not a destination building. Hidden from view, it is separated by a slip road from its more extrovert neighbour – the New Horizons building by Lyons Architecture. In contrast, Building 40 has no iconic pretensions but is no less architecturally ambitious. It is a thoughtful, clever project by Paul Morgan Architects (PMA) that seeks to do more with less, drawing on its context and the wider architectural vocabulary of Monash University’s Clayton campus, to tell its story.

Building 40 is an engineering workshop used by both maintenance services and academic research staff. In an intelligent briefing move it combines the maintenance engineering equipment and the research engineering equipment in one building. Extracting value for money, the brief caters to the pragmatics of the day-to-day running of the campus while doubling as a utility for academic staff customising, testing and fabricating components required in their research. Building 40 is robust and practical to the point of bluntness, utilising the architectural language of the maintenance facility and a maintenance facility budget.....Continue Reading

> via Australian Design Review