The building on an overcast day in 2024, seen from the roadside: deep brown-grey precast spandrels stacked floor over floor with thin window strips beneath them, the top band projecting further, trees and a car park entrance in front.

Molecular Bioscience Building (G08)

Butlin Avenue, University of Sydney, Darlington

Stafford Moor & Farrington. 1970 to 1973. Brutalism.

Size
About 42 by 36 m on plan, seven levels, from OpenStreetMap. No height found; the drawing is estimated
Material
Precast concrete for structure and cladding, off-form concrete on the cantilevered block
Status
National Trust (NSW) register, 2016, which is not a statutory listing. University teaching and research building

Stafford Moor & Farrington designed the building for biochemistry at the University of Sydney between 1970 and 1973; Harper’s survey gives 1971 to 1974. It is known by its campus number, G08. The departments of biochemistry and microbiology inside it became the School of Molecular and Microbial Biosciences in 2001, renamed the School of Molecular Bioscience in 2010, and in 2016 the school merged into the School of Life and Environmental Sciences. The building now carries the name Biochemistry and Microbiology Building, after the two departments.

Precast concrete was used for both the structure and the cladding. Deep panels make each floor a heavy band, with a thin strip of windows tucked beneath it. On the eastern facade a cantilevered block is cast in off-form concrete, set against the precast panels elsewhere, and the design took in an elevated pedestrian walkway, which runs to the Wentworth Building. Waffle ceilings are noted beneath the verandah and in the stair.

The National Trust of NSW added the building to its register in December 2016, citing its architectural and historic significance and its “monumental streetscape”, and calling it “a fine example of the brutalist-style work” of the firm. Glenn Harper pointed to its “innovative use of precast concrete technology for structural and cladding elements”. The listing does not protect it in law, and the Trust said it might ask the Heritage Council to consider the State Heritage Register. In 2016 the building was not among those pending demolition under the University’s Campus Improvement Plan.

Read about Brutalism in Sydney

Sources

  1. Brutalist-style School of Molecular Bioscience at USyd gains heritage listing (16 December 2016), ArchitectureAU
  2. Sydney's brutalist Bioscience building heritage listed (Dimech, 2016), The Grapevine
  3. School of Molecular Bioscience, agency record AGN-00000578, University of Sydney Archives
  4. Rare example of Sydney brutalism (August 2017), Happy Antipodean
  5. The Brutalist Project Sydney (Harper, 2016), inventory item G11, NSW Architects Registration Board