HomeUser Guide

User Guide

The Melbourne School of Design Building Archive is a rich source of information about the design and construction of the new Melbourne School of Design Building. It contains over 20,000 digital resources across six key phases of the project, from the Design Competition held in 2009 to the completion of construction in 2014, and its on-going use.

The six key phases are:

  1. Old ABP building and pre-existing conditions: This section includes various images of the interior and exterior of the previous Architecture and Old Commerce buildings in which the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning was located prior to their demolition. Also included are images of pre-existing conditions and structures, such as the Japanese room and trees and landscaping prior to removal in preparation for the construction of the MSD Building.
  2. Design competition: The Design Competition was a two-stage process for selecting an architect, architectural practice or architectural team to work with the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning (ABP) and The University of Melbourne to design the new MSD Building on the Parkville campus. There were a total of 133 submissions from 15 countries, all of which are included here. Six entrants were then selected to proceed to competition stage, with each entrant developing a conceptual response to the key issues of the brief.
  3. Design: The Design phase included Schematic Design (SD), Design Development (DD), Construction Documentation (CD) and the Tender process. John Wardle Architects worked with NADAAA to design the MSD Building. Sketches, drawings, renders, images of design models and other related documents developed as part of the Design phase are included here.
  4. Pre-construction: The Pre-construction phase encompasses decant and dismantling of the previous Architecture and Old Commerce buildings, including enabling works (services redirection, tree removal, propping of Joseph Reed façade), demolition and site establishment. It ended with the handover of the site to the main contractor, Brookfield Multiplex.
  5. Construction: The Construction phase involved construction of the MSD Building by Brookfield Multiplex. It began with the handover of the site to the main contractor on 3rd May 2013. This included the pre-fabrication of many components off-site as well as traditional on-site construction. The building reached practical completion on 8th August 2014, four months ahead of schedule. Included here are images and videos of the construction process, construction drawings and other related documents.
  6. Post-construction: The post-construction phase includes the commissioning of the building prior to occupancy, relocation of staff and students, operation of the building and associated on-going activities, such as teaching, research and events. Publications, research and building operational data, and images related to the on-going use of the building are included here.

Items associated with each phase can be filtered using the “Browse by Tags” option within the “Browse Items” navigation menu, where the phases are represented as tags.

Additionally, the items are organised into four collections, namely “Entities,” “Digital Objects,” “Archive Objects,” and “Publications.” Items within each collection can be accessed through the “Browse Collections” navigation menu.

Note: Email correspondence associated with various phases of the project has been archived. However, this information is not available in the online search. Please contact Prof Robert Crawford if you would like to discuss access to this information.