Connectivity creates community, exchange, and campus life.
The Forest revitalises, adapts, and activates the University of Tasmania’s heritage Forestry building, establishing a new CBD campus for the Tasmanian School of Business and Economics, Humanities, Social Sciences, and University College.
Organised around three design pillars developed in direct response to the University’s Hobart CBD masterplan, the project delivers a highly connected, porous campus of welcoming spaces that invite business and community access while honouring the site’s heritage. An urban design strategy exposes the rivulet through a landscaped rear plaza and winter garden, connecting Brisbane Street to a green spine on Melville Street.
Talk to Bruno Mendes about The Forest, University of Tasmania
Working from the University’s existing masterplan thinking, the design team developed three pillars that shaped every decision on site.
Building as a campus
The Forest functions as a campus within a building, housing diverse spaces for students to exchange ideas and share in the university experience. Six distinct spatial typologies, from focused study zones to places for meeting others, organise a rich collection of interstitial spaces through clear navigation and through-block connections.
Found Conditions
The site holds a variety of heritage buildings, each with its own history and material palette. These found conditions ground the interior design response and give distinct identities to the different neighbourhoods within the precinct, all connected back to the overarching design narrative.
The restored conservatory dome, originally designed by Morris-Nunn and Associates in 1997, anchors the civic heart of the campus beneath a forested atrium that re-establishes a pre-colonial ecosystem through ethically sourced mature trees and visible water systems.
Retaining 60 percent of what was already onsite and targeting a 40 percent reduction in upfront carbon, the project adopts a comprehensively circular approach to materials – the largest commercial application of hempcrete in Australasia among them.
Layered connectivity
Connectivity inside the building, to the broader campus, and to the city is essential to the design. Publicly accessible thoroughfares and through-block links weave the precinct into Hobart’s urban fabric, creating the conditions for community, exchange, and campus life to take root.
2024 World Architecture Festival (WAF) – Future: Higher Education & Research, Winner
2024 WAFX Award – Building Technology, Winner
2026 Tasmanian Architecture Awards – Sydney Blythe Award for Educational Architecture, Winner
2026 Tasmanian Architecture Awards – Barry McNeill Award for Sustainable Architecture, Winner
“There’s an expansive sustainability story that we are feeding into the many layers of this project. For the Forestry Building, we are looking ahead 50-100 years and thinking about how the choices we make now are going to play out then.”
Early site photographs.
For their collaboration on the University of Tasmania’s Forestry Building, design studio Woods Bagot and engineering and sustainability consultancy Arup are extending the horizon lines of architecture’s impact, factoring in a building’s end-of-life. This is design for deconstruction.
The Forest – The University of Tasmania’s flagship Hobart campus – is officially complete, with university staff and students now moving onsite. An official opening ceremony was held on Friday 6 February, attended by university delegates, project partners, and university staff.
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