Arts West is a campus landmark, inside and out.

ARM and Architectus worked with the Faculty of Arts to tailor the building for object-based learning, as applied in the Faculty curricula. The learning spaces are customised for exhibiting and studying items from the University’s 23 cultural collections. The interior architecture, textiles and finishes set the scene with a rich mash-up of cultures, times, places and ideas.

The circulation spaces are filled with inspiring places for group and individual study, charging devices, and learning efficiently outside contact hours. These in-between places are for serendipitous encounters with academic staff and fellow students.

The interior design theme is dubbed the Salon and Warehouse. The Warehouse character is raw and rough-hewn: there are concrete slab floors, exposed studs in breakout spaces, exposed slab undersides, ceramic iron lining on walls and balustrades, and concrete-tiled staircases. The low lighting evokes early 20th-Century industrial spaces: moody, mysterious and discoverable. By contrast, the Salon refers to private gatherings held by educated and often aristocratic hosts and hostesses in 16th to 20th-Century Europe. It is a modern take on the 16th-Century Kunst und Wunderkammer, a collection of spaces displaying an encyclopaedic array of objects and artefacts to represent the world of study and knowledge.

The striking façade features images of selected University collection items.