Peter Karmel Building, Canberra School of Music
Australian National University, Canberra ACT
The intent for the Peter Karmel Building was to create a building whose design language is simple and clear in expressing the functions of the spaces within its walls.
The two-storey building was designed as a new addition to the Canberra School of Music to accommodate numerous practice, performance and administrative functions for the School. It creates a new entry court to the complex and provides integrated connections between practice and performance spaces in both the original School and new addition.
Carefully positioned on the site, the addition attempts to create a sleek, elegant structure which maintains the logic of surface, penetration, and volumes of the original School while expressing them in a lighter and less dominant form.
Artist Marie Hagerty was commissioned by the architects to design the facade which creates a patterning and enlivening of the glazed and solid surfaces of the building’s exterior in a large-scale architectural form.
Photography: Blain Crellin, Harold Guida