Kangan Batman TAFE

Automotive Centre of Excellence (ACE). Stage 1 (Stage 2 is expected to be complete by early 2011).

This Lyons building is a one stop auto training shop for Victoria. A lot of functionality has been wedged into a tight site, helped along by a first floor with heavy duty lift for carrying cars up and down. Lyons seem to have made the most of an obviously limited brief, using the necessary windows and safety markings to express some of their trademark diagonal style.

It works well as a building while empty and quiet, but you’d have to have reservatinos about setting foot in there while its busy. There are just so many nasty auto-building actvities jammed next to one another you’d have to wonder how you could hear or breathe. Still, the occupiers deem it a success, and may expand to a six day week to accommodate demand. The facilities are so state of the art that graduates express disappointment when they return to their old-school suburban auto shops which are slightly more Victorian in atmosphere (meaning the era not the state).

The building is 5 star friendly – using automatic thermostats to shift air around as required. The only air-conditioned spaces are the offices (one can imagine the briefing session), all other areas are naturally ventilated and heated (with the exception of the halls which have gas boosters for the winter months). The teaching spaces suffer from this, being stifling hot even without students in the room – probably something to do with all the computers.

The buillding is Stage 1 only at the moment, it is soon to triple in size to accommodate just about anything to do with automobile training.

Is there some slight irony that an automotive training centre is 5 star friendly? Apparently the students are made aware of forthcoming changes in the industry due to peak oil and carbon emissions, but this isn’t evident other than in an electric toy car. Surprising also is the fact that all broken cars returned to their gleaming initial state by the students are then crushed into cubes.