A New Way to Experience Our History

A new mobile phone app has been created to show the history of recently demolished weatherboard buildings that are credited with being the birthplace of ANU.

The app, developed by Glasshouse Creative Media for ANU Heritage, lets users virtually explore the inside and outside of the Old Administration Area using 360-degree photosphere technology by stitching historic images with photos of the modern landscape.

The app guides the viewer through three separate photospheres, or sections that include stories and information, about the buildings and their day-to-day activities.

• The Making of ANU: The vision, design, construction, operation and education of early ANU.
• Foundations of Research: The four foundation research schools and their establishment.
• Maestros, Pioneers and Planners: Those people who took a big risk on the vision to establish ANU and worked tirelessly to see it succeed.

The Old Administration Area, once referred to in a newspaper article in 1950 as the 'sheds in a paddock', were the genesis of The John Curtin School of Medical Research, as well as the first Chancelry, administration, accounts and maintenance sections.

The collection of buildings, which was located between the Menzies Library and the ANU College of Law, was demolished in 2016 to make way for a new park area.

However one of the buildings known as H Block (the former physiology labs of the John Curtin School of Medical Research) was retained, while the frames of several other buildings are also still standing.

"It's important to recognise that these unobtrusive and modest-looking buildings, with their simple architecture, played such a vital role in turning ANU into the fantastic University that it is today," said ANU Heritage Officer Amy Jarvis.

"We wanted to capture the history in a way that was fitting and yet informative and to provide what the app developer called 'intimacy without proximity'"

The ANU OAA 360 app 'A Shed in a Paddock: The beginnings of our ANU' is available for download in the App Store and on Google Play.