University of SA, Cafeterias,
City West, Mawson Lakes and Magill Campus

University revitalisation through caffeination

A University of South Australia (UniSA) review of its cafeterias resulted in a program of revitalization for these key centres of student life. Tectvs was engaged as the Architect to provide design services for the upgrade of facilities at its campuses, with the brief to change the image of the venues from a cold-institutional cafeteria to a contemporary café within extremely modest budgets.  

Accessed from gritty and colourful Hindley Street, the City West cafeteria was a dark and dull throwback to the utilitarian factory paradigm – a room full of tables and chairs, and a traditional cattle-race serving system. Tectvs focused on breaking up the room into a series of spaces and treatments that better related to the habits and expectations of the contemporary student, for whom the cafeteria was an essential social and service centre, day and night. Tectvs created different pockets of seating – casual, formal and open – which were also defined and accentuated by lighting treatments. Lacking a budget to upgrade the building fabric itself, Tectvs effectively inserted a ‘stage set’ into the existing interior: the cafés cater to different pockets of seating: casual, formal and open, marking spaces adaptable and highly functional. 

At Mawson Lakes, a redundant classroom area was designed for conversion to a coffee shop. Tectvs redesigned the premises and specified contemporary materials, furniture and lighting; it also provided graphic design services for branding and environmental graphics for the building and design requirements of the café franchisee.  At the Magill campus, Tectvs was engaged to assess the building and, again, meet the design requirements of the Café franchisee. It consequently designed the base building for the café and acted as the project manager and design moderator on the project which would serve as a template for the development of all the franchisee’s cafés on-campus nationally.