An underused piece of award-winning architecture in Australia is getting a makeover thanks to one of the country’s leading firms.

ArchitectureAU is reporting that the iconic one-time Forestry Tasmania headquarters in Hobart is set for an adaptive reuse scheme from Woods Bagot that will convert the dome and former warehouse space into an academic facility for the University of Tasmania. 

The dome was designed around two existing 1930s structures by UTAS professor Robert Morris-Nunn in 1997. It received the RAIA’s Recycled Buildings award the next year and has been listed on Tasmania’s state heritage register for over three decades. The architect is now working closely with Woods Bagot on restoring his design, which he described as being a “wonderful” development for the community. 

“Seeing the building fall into disuse over the last few years has been really sad, so to know that the University is planning to restore it, and even reinstate the forest under the dome, is amazing news,” Morris-Nunn said. “It’s the first time anything I’ve built has been heritage-listed. So it’s nice to know that legacy is now going to be preserved and given new life.”

The university is currently in the process of transitioning part of its campus operations into Hobart’s central business district, a precinct of which will be anchored by the restored building. The Woods Bagot project will eventually serve as a home to UTAS’s faculty of law, business, and economics, and incorporate a network of greenspaces that ties in the central part of the campus to the city of Hobart more broadly. 

“We are creating a very sustainable and beautiful building by retrofitting an existing space with a low carbon and circular design that makes extensive use of timber,” a spokesperson in charge of the campus transformation said in a statement. “The design celebrates Hobart’s architectural heritage, scale and character. The building will provide great contemporary learning spaces for students that support our mission to make higher education more accessible.” 

For his part, Nunn says the development is a step in the right direction that can serve as a showcase of the state’s proud history of adaptive reuse.

“That desire to repurpose old buildings for new uses, rather than just tearing them down and rebuilding, is something evolved earlier in Tasmania than anywhere else in Australia,” he said in a university statement. “And that is a really positive thing, not just because it shows that people here love their old buildings, but also because the recycling aspect is very important. And about half of the University’s projects for this transformation are recycled or refurbished projects of one kind or another.”