Revis­ing History

Lec­ture theatre BLT 100 in the Bio­logy Build­ing of the Uni­ver­sity of Auck­land, reworked by Steph­en­son & Turner.

The lec­ture theatre upgrade was part of a campus-wide upgrade. The university's bio­logy build­ing was designed by Pennsylvania-born Roy Alstan Lip­pin­cott in the early 1930s.

Archi­tect Steve Hind­ley says that although the build­ing is con­sidered a her­it­age build­ing, it isn't pro­tec­ted. How­ever, the archi­tec­ture and engin­eer­ing firm, along with the uni­ver­sity, wanted to restore the theatre in a man­ner that was sym­path­etic to the ori­ginal. Super­fi­cially, this required strip­ping back some of the '80s revi­sions, such as upholstered seats and car­pet. The undu­lat­ing slatted-ceiling form hides ser­vices and draws eyes forward.

Slat seats, full-length kauri tops and cast-iron frames are some of the her­it­age aspects. A major driver for the pro­ject, how­ever, was bring­ing the theatre up to mod­ern edu­ca­tion stand­ards. The most fun­da­mental design require­ment was enabling all stu­dents to eas­ily hear and see everything presented.

This pro­ject received an Award of Com­mend­a­tion in the IESANZ Light­ing Awards 2009.