Film School calls Action!
The new AFTRS: Cradleland to the stars of the future
Now
The Entertainment Quarter – formerly known as Fox Studios – with its shopping strip of empty shoe stores and franchise juice bars, currently ends abruptly with a clean concrete panel and a row of 13 metre high concrete slabs running the length of a massive sound stage – they’re part of the new Australian Film, Television and Radio School complex.
Future
That blank wall will soon be a major artwork. “It [will be] a line and dot painting”, says architect Joe Agius, “with the lines and dots cut out of rust plate steel, off-set from the pre cast wall – a monumental work, at that scale, within that public space.”
With its ‘floating’ roof, patchwork rippled aluminium sidings and massive glass atrium, the new AFTRS is generations ahead of the film school’s current home: clusters of bland institutional brick and concrete nestled in parkland at Macquarie University.
“It had the feel of an underground bunker,” says cinematographer and former AFTRS student Joel Overton. “[But] we often transformed it with sets ranging from aeroplane hangers or hotel bars. It was versatile, I’ll give it that much”.
Despite its ugliness, the North Ryde site helped hundreds of media professionals hone their craft. “Essentially we were doing about 60 hours a week at the school.”
Back in Moore Park, Agius is explaining the new cultural hub. “The building is quite compact and is designed around one central hub, the atrium. It’s enlivened by the fact the public library addresses that space. There’s a café that spills into it, the studios and auditorium are accessible, and spaces like the ‘Radio Bubble’ stand within the atrium.”
Agius guides Time Out to an unremarkable wedge-shaped second floor room – a remarkable futurist feature. “The idea is the lecturer within the space will be able to lecture students remotely in Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane. If you’re in the classroom in Sydney you’ll see students in Melbourne and Adelaide on the other walls.”
The space is about eye contact between floors, fostering interaction between students and convergence between media forms.
“The physical nature of the old building prohibited people from interacting with each other. The new building responds to the new technological environment the school and other media organisations need to work in,” says Agius.