University of Canterbury Student’s Union

This project presented a complex brief involving many varying functions. The design challenge was to make coherent order out of this diversity.

The four largest spaces - entrance foyer, theatre, cafeteria, and common room - were placed in a two-storey central block, with the theatre above the entrance and the common room above the cafeteria. The smaller spaces of meeting rooms, offices, kitchens, and service rooms were strung out in two narrow strips each side of the central block.

Cradling the whole building was a closely spaced framework of precast concrete, and prestressed post-tensioned beams and columns. Every carefully designed junction, and every cable-termination block, was displayed inside and out - making a constructive tour de force. It was aptly described by the chairman on the Grants Committee at the opening of the building, as “a skeletal encrustation”.

In 1974, the building was nearly doubled in size by a westward addition containing a cafeteria and further common rooms and function rooms. The same structural skeleton encircling larger central spaces was adopted, with a stepped outdoor arena being formed between the two buildings. The building’s predominant materials of robust fairface concrete, concrete block and timber have survived vigorous student use.