Mark Syke
Mark creates authentic and timeless images that interpret and communicate architecture with a clear and coherent narrative. He has worked as a professional architecture photographer since 2013 within Australia and Scandinavia. His commissioned work is published on a regular basis in the architecture and design media and his archive is represented through View Pictures UK. Mark is a founding member of Image Makers Association Australia.

The Project
Inside the high-tech centre, shared research platforms are encircled by collaborative research offices for focused intellectual endeavour, along with interactive spaces for school engagement with students, research colleagues and industry.

The jewel in the building’s crown is the 1600-square-metre world-class flexible nanofabrication laboratory — the largest and first of its kind in the southern hemisphere. This facility, together with the 22 ultra-stable labs, will enable the brightest minds in physics to advance the frontiers of quantum physics, photonics, and nanotechnology.

The lab facilities are enclosed in a transparent three-storey timber mullioned glass shell giving visual prominence to the research conducted inside and, importantly, offering researchers views to other parts of the school and landscape beyond. Generous skylights illuminate the atrium’s open staircases and interaction terraces that link labs to workspaces, bringing further animation and delight to the interior.

Privacy and openness are balanced throughout the building as the glass invites people to look in and understand even if they can’t touch.

With the co-location of the laboratories with semi-open neighbourhood workspaces, the school welcomes a shift toward better knowledge-sharing between research ​‘tribes’. Social areas support life beyond the secure laboratory and workspace zones, encouraging impromptu interactions between the physics research cohort, students, and visitors.

Architect/Designer of the project: Hassell