CSU Dentistry, Orange

In 2007 Charles Sturt University placed a bid and won funding from the Commonwealth Government to establish a regional School of Dentistry and Heath Sciences. The overall project required two teaching and clinical buildings (one in Wagga and one in Orange) to be designed and constructed by the middle of 2009. This was to be followed by 3 additional clinical buildings at Bathurst, Dubbo and Albury to be completed in 2010. After being awarded the project as principal design consultant in August 2007 the BHA team successfully designed and documented the Wagga and Orange facilities for the new school of Dentistry and Health Sciences (a total of $30.0m of construction works) to allow a tender to be issued to Contractors in January 2008. As part of the project at the Orange campus the University needed to upgrade the campus and provide a number of adjunct facilities to accommodate the growth. These works included refurbishing and extending the existing campus library, adding a new common tiered lecture theatre and a new biomedical science experiential learning centre (a total of $10.0m construction). These works were required to be undertaken in tandem with the new School of Dentistry and Health Sciences. The design of a number of substantial new buildings was seen as opportunity of transforming the existing “agricultural college campus” into a regional health science facility. BHA design team successfully developed both a new masterplan for the campus to reorientate the focus of the campus and created a new architectural language for the campus to take the University into the new century. The project involved reviewing the existing campus movement patterns and overlay them with new facilities to create a new pedestrian spine to link both new and existing facilities across the whole campus. The University required that the new buildings be designed to achieve a notional 5 star green star rating. As such our team worked closely with the services engineers to develop a design which achieved this goal. The Orange climate requires the minimisation of heat loss as well as managing heat gain.