University of Otago Dental Building Upgrade

Supporting the south

Having a new hospital-level patient-treatment building at New Zealand’s only national centre for dentistry in Dunedin helps secure patient care, jobs, teaching and world-leading research in the south.

University Chancellor Dr Royden Somerville places the stone plaque to commemorate the opening of the new building earlier this month.

The new building

The new 8,000m² building houses:

Undergraduate teaching clinics
Dentistry
Oral Health
Clinical Dental Technology (takes impressions, makes teeth and dentures)
Specialty clinics
Paediatric dentistry
Special Care
Orthodontics (teeth straightening, including a method commonly called ‘braces’)
Oral surgery
Oral Medicine (e.g. lesions, dry mouth)
The Primary Care Unit (urgent care and tooth extractions)
An operating theatre
Three surgical procedure rooms
Endodontics (root canals)
Periodontics (gums, supporting tissue and implants)
Prosthodontics (crowns, bridges, implants etc)
Radiography

A new 1800 square metre atrium has been built as the ‘heart’ of the facility, to be used by patients, students and staff. The atrium is already linked to the new building and will also be linked to the existing Walsh Building, in front of the new building on Great King Street, once that building has been refurbished.

The future

The next stage of this construction project has already begun – gutting and refurbishing the Walsh Building.

Many people’s teeth have been assessed and treated there since the building opened in 1961 in Great King Street but the refurbished building will only be for students and staff – housing their research laboratories, academic offices, support, and teaching laboratories.

The University’s budget for this entire project – the new building, Walsh refurbishment and the atrium that links them – is about $130 million dollars.

The results of this project will help the University recruit and retain world-leading students and staff, to a University that has been home to New Zealand’s national centre of dentistry since 1907.

Heritage

The Walsh Building’s heritage-listed, glass-curtain facade will be carefully upgraded and replicated so it meets current weather-proofing and heat retention standards.

The mosaic north-facing wall will be cleaned and refurbished.

Both those tasks will involve Salmond-Reed Heritage specialists and Heritage New Zealand, which lists the modernist building as a Category 1 historic place.

Former Faculty of Dentistry Dean Sir John Walsh’s daughter Dame Elizabeth Hanan, of Dunedin, with the history panel showing the three buildings the Faculty of Dentistry has inhabited since it opened in 1907 – the building that is currently the Staff Club, the Marples Building that is now used by the Department of Zoology, and the Walsh Building, which is named after Dame Elizabeth’s father and is being gutted and refurbished as part of this dentistry project.

Daughter

At the opening of the new dentistry building this month was Dunedin’s Dame Elizabeth Hanan, the daughter of Sir John Walsh, the Faculty of Dentistry Dean for 25 years after being appointed in 1946.

The existing Walsh Building was named in his honour and seeing a new building opening next door was an emotional occasion for Dame Elizabeth, who “absolutely feels his vision is continuing”.