Our Facilities
The Australian National University School of Art & Design is positioned within 145 hectares of beautifully maintained parklands in the nation's capital Canberra, and is adjacent to the CBD and Parliamentary Triangle.
The School spans three buildings on the one site and includes a dedicated Art & Music Library and a Gallery and Project Space that host a diverse annual program of exhibitions and events.
As a student at the ANU, you will be able to take full advantage of our cafes and bistros for socialising, sport and recreational facilities for a healthy timeout, and of course our state-of-the-art teaching and learning facilities. You can also enjoy access to wi-fi, arts and social clubs as well as the gym, various cuisine options, filtered water stations and much more.
Join the friendly ANU community and enjoy all that Australia’s top university has to offer!
Our Studios
Select a discipline below to read more information about our excellent workshop facilities and benefits.
The Ceramics studio embraces the diversity of ceramic practices including the creation of work for exhibitions, the table and home, architectural spaces, and community engagement initiatives. The dedicated studios are fully equipped with both traditional and new experimental technologies, including a 3-D clay printer and digital transfer printing. The studios include wheel throwing, hand forming , mould making and casting, clay processing, glaze laboratory and firing facilities. Firing technologies include electric, gas, wood and vapour and other types of low temperature firing.
The studio also exhibits an extensive permanent teaching collection including works by graduates, staff and international visiting artists that highlight the studio's significant, 40-year contribution to Ceramics art & design, education and research.
ANU Design responds to the opportunities and challenges of our rapidly changing world and draws inspiration from the incredible new forms of design that continue to emerge.
As a student of Design at ANU, you will have access to dedicated studio spaces and cutting-edge technology. During your degree you will have access to equipment for traditional art, craft and design processes and new technology within both the School of Art & Design studio workshops and the ANU MakerSpace. Design works with the studio workshops to develop new facilities and equipment: recent acquisitions include a Potterbot clay 3d printer (in collaboration with Ceramics), and a risograph printer in the Printmaking and Drawing studio. Design students also have access to specialised tools including hand & power tools, 3D printers, laser cutters, sewing machines, badge maker and a virtual reality lab.
The Glass Workshop provides some of the finest facilities in the world, producing globally recognised glass artists. The light-filled space includes ample layout benches, large sinks and grated floor drains, and features a hot shop, cold shop, kiln room, flame-working, mold room, and layout working areas. The hot shop has three glory holes ranging in size from 500mm to 750mm, two Wet Dog Glass melting furnaces, three workstations, multiple anneals and quality equipment and tooling.
The cold shop features heavy equipment such as a Waterjet cutter, multiple lathes and state-of-the-art grinding, engraving and finishing equipment. The studios have two dedicated kiln rooms with 18 kilns suitable for both glass casting and fusing and all kilns have multistage programmable controllers.The separate mold room services both wax and clay facilities with a mould mixing space with extraction and wash out floor drains.
Our light-filled and spacious Painting studio offers students with a broad range of tools and equipment. There is an extensive range of handheld and power tools, a fully equipped machine room specifically designed for making canvas stretchers, and a spray booth for aerosol, air brush and enamel painting. Students are guided through their studies by expert technical and academic staff. Further benefits include discounted rates on purchases of canvas and linen.
The Photography & Media Arts Workshop supports the production of video, audio, still and moving image capture, post production and output. This includes multimedia installations, projection, fine art printing, virtual reality, augmented reality and programmable logic devices, interactive & generative art.
Our Multimedia Facility in the Peter Karmel Building includes one of the largest green screen studio’s in Canberra, an animation lab, a fine printing lab with flatbed scanners and inkjet printers, a further 3 digital media labs with 66 Apple Macintosh Workstations, an equipment store offering loan equipment including tripods, DSLR Cameras and audiovisual capture systems, sound dead audio capture facility including editing and listening rooms, and studio space for Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Photogrammetry and, a dedicated server facility and spaces for collaborative working.
In the School of Art & Design Building, our facilities include an Inkjet Research Facility including, one specialist 2.5 x 1.5-meter AGFA Anapurna UV flatbed printer, one 1.5-meter fine art inkjet printer and specialist Piezography K7 1.1m inkjet printer, Hasselblad Flextight and iQmart3 scanners, window mount cutting and photo finishing area.
Our workshop also houses specialist photography facilities including an Elinchrom photographic flash portrait studio with overhead gantry lighting system, a Darkroom Complex containing 20 individual enclosed enlarger rooms connected to a 1.1m wide Black and White silver gelatin processor. It includes facilities for film processing and a fume cabinet for chemical mixing, supported by a high volume complete dump air system and waste chemical neutralization including silver recovery. A second specialist darkroom for advanced fine printing, with 12 enlarging bays with large format enlargers and a third specialist darkroom used for alternate processes and mural printing is also on offer to Photomedia & Media Arts students.
Printmedia & Drawing spans multiple studios, including a lithographic workshop with three dedicated presses and a library of over fifty lithographic stones. There is also an etching studio with three etching presses, a dedicated acid room with two large fume hoods and an isolated aquatint room. A fully equipped screenprinting studio is offered, and includes a library of over seventy screens with a dedicated exposure/coating/washout room and a dedicated screen reclaiming room. The facilities also include a relief studio with three relief presses and a Albion Platen press. The exclusive Book Studio features two Proof Letterpresses, 2 Nipping Presses, a Large Electric Etching Press and 100's of drawers of full sets of type. Students and staff also have access to a Risograph and plan printer.
The Sculpture and Spatial Practice Workshop supports a wide diversity of sculptural research, from traditional sculptural making spaces to flexible work areas for installation, performance and projection. The workshop also has a large outdoor work space, containing undercover work spaces, two grinding bays and a large water blasting area, two smaller dedicated installation and performance spaces and a seminar room with projection and networking capacity with communal work areas.
The Workshop has a well-supported wood machinery room, three welding bays (Mig and Tig welding, plasma cutting etc), grinding room (linishers, pedestal grinders, cut-off saw), and sheet metal equipment, sophisticated extraction systems, overhead radiant heating and LED lighting. The workshop is also serviced by a tech room containing a large range of hand tools. The workshop also includes a dedicated Foundry and Mould Making area. The facility has the capacity to cast large public art works, through to smaller experimental research projects. It has two gas fired furnaces and a large drive in gas kiln, alongside a smaller electric kiln. The facility also has a dedicated wax room.
The Textiles workshop proudly boasts multiple bespoke facilities, including a dedicated Screenprinting Studio with two large fabric tables, a large screen library with over 50 textiles screens, a washout bay and exposure unit. There is also a custom dye workshop containing multiple dye vats built into stainless steel benches and a specialised dye library. On the ground floor, there is a multi-functional studio space for teaching and assessment sessions.
Students will enjoy views of the School’s southern entrance via a glass wall in the Weave Room. This space boasts two, full-scale large looms, over twenty tabletop looms and four digital looms. The large, open-plan studio spaces and courtyard allow students the space to create and experiment.
Visitor & Accessibility Information
The School provides designated mobility accessible parking, accessible toilets and wheelchair accessible entry routes. There is a designated parenting room with change table facilities in the main entrance to the School of Art & Design and the Sir Roland Wilson building.
For access information at the School please see the visitor information page.
For information on accessibility at the ANU, please visit the Access & Inclusion site.
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