This building was originally a rubber and tyre warehouse built in the early 1950s, and later the showroom section was used for the RMIT Union dental service. In this latest recycling as studio and workshop spaces for the School of Architecture and Design, we sought to make use of and underline the straightforward urban qualities of this street-level corner building as an economical space for student use and a direct interface with the public realm. Through collaboration with staff from the architecture program, a plan was devised where the allocated space of four studios and corridor was rearranged into four teaching alcoves of the smallest functional area, so that a non-specific (and non-bookable) space could be opened up, usable on a 24-hour basis. This configuration allows informal work to carry on while classes are in progress, and for both students and staff to move freely between different modes of working and learning, individually or in groups. The workspace, and the teaching alcoves which open off it, have something of the character of a studio: a work environment that is familiar and natural to students and architects but difficult to come by in the university. It is not like a classroom, or an office, or a computer lab, or a workshop, or a gallery – but able to be parts of all of these at once. Design in this case was a process of removal and emptying-out; revealing the original enclosure, and then carefully putting things back – as little as possible – to accommodate new

functions without destroying the original sense of a flexible and tough multi-purpose space. Considerable effort went into designing-out the stuff that frequently occupies such institutional buildings so that surfaces and spaces could feel 'empty': security readers and light switches are mounted on the inside of door jambs, doors can be used as built-in whiteboard surfaces without secondary furniture, and the way in which light fittings are suspended minimises the need for cabling. New divisions and fittings work with and accentuate the existing structure. Design decisions were a reflection on the precise way in which one might remove and then intervene in such an environment. Walking along Lygon Street, you come across a roller door that was always there – through closed for the past twenty years – and a new glass shopfront/ entry recessed behind this propped-open screen. No planning permit is required. The gallery space leads through to an existing basketball yard, which has been re-focussed from dead-end to a primary social mixing space. This side circulation route was the original loading bay, and the new works reinstate the through-path linking the public street to the deep campus behind. Re-glazing of existing openings and entrances allows the activities of the studio to engage with the street, and for exhibition openings to literally spill onto the footpath. At moments, the precision of the new interventions are understood in relation to the rawness of the urban, lived-in experience.