Building Highlight - Old Geology Building / Engineering Building

The Engineering Building was originally constructed as the Geology Building, the last of the campus buildings situated along University Avenue. The building was designed by University Architect, Bill Batt and Clerk of Works, W. Pearce.  

The building included a central lecture theatre which was surrounded by a 50-seat first-year laboratory, four smaller corner labs and four demonstrators’ rooms. The entrance foyer had wall-map displays and two large display cases for museum and teaching specimens, plus an artistic polished-slab wall made from local rocks. On the upper level was a map room and another lecture theatre, which was surrounded by staff offices, administration rooms and student cubicles. This floor also included a small Geochemistry Lab, X-ray analysis and diffraction labs, and a library. Technical services, the Lapidary Lab and a large museum with modern compactus units were located in an eastern single-storey wing. 

The Geology Department had originally been housed in the huts formerly occupied by the John Curtin Medical School near the Menzies Library. When the new Chemistry and Physics buildings opened in 1961, Geology moved temporarily into the Physics building (M Rickard 2010).  

In 1991 the University made the decision to consolidate the science precincts and to relocate the Department of Geology from the University Avenue building to accommodate the new Engineering Department. The result of this was the colocation of Botany within the Zoology Building and Geology housed in the old Botany Building (DA Brown Building).   

References

Rickard, M 2010, Geology at ANU (1959-2009): Fifty years of history and reminiscences, ANU Press, Canberra, <http://doi.org/10.22459/GA.12.2010>