University of Western Sydney Courtyard

StoneSet was chosen as the preferred surface to withstand foot traffic of thousands of Sydneys best and brightest students at the University of Western Sydney campus in Richmond!

Working with Taylor Brammer Landscape Architects as the head contractor, who developed the overall Masterplan for the university.

Looking for a high value, structurally superior, safe and beautiful solution for the paving works, StoneSet were called upon to install a total 1600sqm worth of resin bound paths and driveway resurfacing.

Cutting edge design and building materials were married with a respect and recognition of the past, with an incredible result! The images below show a campus redesigned to inspire the young generation of upcoming professionals and academics!

By working with the existing paving, there was very little requirement and cost to go ripping up the hundreds of square meters of exiting paving! This was far more cost effective, avoiding both labour costs (demolition and excavation) and landfill costs.

Proudly paving Australia’s Heritage

Significantly, the Western Sydney University campus had been expanded from the original 1818 Female Orphan School, one of the first three-story buildings constructed in Australia at the time.

The Female Orphan School was built as an expression of the colonial government’s policy of providing care for young ‘orphaned’ girls.. Governor King had previously established an orphan school on Norfolk Island and he opened a similar facility in Sydney Cove on August 17, 1801 – only 13 years after European settlement of Australia began… The orphanage in Sydney Cove was located next to a public works depot and it was feared that the girls’ close proximity to workers there, and to other influences in Sydney town put them at risk of ‘moral corruption.’ The more remote Parramatta site was preferable because of its distance from these corrupting influences.

https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/femaleorphanschool/home/the_female_orphan_school_1813_to_1850

These days three-story buildings are not only ubiquitous but dwarfed by high-rise buildings (often dozens of stories higher than them). With the advent of mechanical lifts and elevators, the investment money to drive development further into the sky became available in the early 1900s.

This heritage site is important because it is one of the very few surviving examples of how a three-story building was constructed. Now some incredible 200 years old, it is an Architectural artefact and a very old building by Australian standards.

Porous and Paved in Gold

StoneSet was chosen as the preferred surface to withstand the foot traffic of thousands of Sydney’s best and brightest students at the University of Western Sydney campus in Richmond.

After a few days of preparation work of forming up edging at the side of the pathways (using metal angle) it was time to being installing the resin bound stone.

The pathways of course met all the design requirements for non-slip and incline angles. Typically a fine-grain sand is incorporated in the mixed batches at the point of mixing resin and stone.

Our team go about adding this material along with the two-part catalysed polyurethane resin and of course the bagged aggregate. This video below shows the team starting to lay in the morning and working out from the corner. The build up of bags on the mixer (left of screen) reflects 4 x bags of 20kg stone being ‘batched’ mixed with resin at a time.

As the team lay the stone, the bags build up and are split to release the stone into the mixer where the resin is applied. Each batch is then released into the wheel barrow where it is taken to be troweled into position.

This was the process over

The video below shows a section being overlaid 1 square meter at a time. As this was the largest project undertaken by StoneSet in 2019 the site team was at the university for the full week installing resin bound paving over 1600sqm

Learn More About Permeable Paving for Heritage Listed Buildings