UTS Central

The Project

UTS Central was the final chapter of UTS's decade-long, $1 billion City Campus Master Plan, a 17-storey tower and five-level podium at Broadway, Ultimo, that would house the Blake Library, Faculty of Law, a science superlab, a food court, collaborative classrooms, and extensive student amenity. It was the most architecturally ambitious building on campus, and the project that would define how the university presented itself to the city.

The Challenge

Nothing about this building was straightforward. The site required demolishing the existing Building 2 while retaining its basement levels, and the new structure had to integrate with the original Broadway podium by Lacoste + Stevenson and Daryl Jackson Robin Dyke. The tower's geometry twists, no two floor plates are identical, which made every structural and facade detail a bespoke problem. The glass facade alone comprised approximately 3,600 panels across 48 different types. The building also had to reconcile two competing grid alignments: the campus grid at lower levels and the Broadway city grid above, all while stepping back to protect solar access to Alumni Green and One Central Park.

My Approach

I worked as Project Architect at FJMT over a two-year period spanning project initiation through to construction documentation and early construction works. I secured approval for the State Significant Development Application modification envelope, working directly with the UTS Project Management Office on building form options and conceptual planning. I coordinated design outputs with structural and services consultants through the complexity of a twisting tower where standard details rarely applied. Once construction began, I led the team delivering structural and fitout work packages to Richard Crookes Constructions, including on-site coordination and inspection of early works. It was the most technically demanding project I'd worked on, and it required me to hold the design intent steady through every compromise and coordination challenge that a $300 million building throws at you.

The Outcome

UTS Central opened in August 2019. It achieved a 5-Star Green Star rating and introduced world-first educational facilities, including collaborative classrooms each accommodating up to 350 students with no fixed front of room. The DNA-inspired double helix staircase, fabricated from Australian steel and curved glass, became one of Sydney's most recognised contemporary interior features.

This project taught me what it takes to deliver architectural ambition at scale without losing the design quality along the way. The discipline of managing competing stakeholders, bespoke construction details, and a complex approval process on a single project is something I carry into every engagement at Yaxley Studio, even when the budgets are smaller, the rigour is the same.