Museum, art gallery or offices? Actually it's all three at a new building at the University of Sydney, one one of some 80 buildings across the city, new and old, haunting and hallowed, that will throw open its doors for the Sydney Open weekend at the start of November.

Exhibits on show in the new administration building at the University of Sydney ahead of Sydney Open. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

The rather unromantically named F23 Administration Building at Sydney University invites the public to come and experience first hand the achievements of well-regarded architects Grimshaw. There is art, museum items, mysterious scientific apparatus including a heliostat, leather-bound tomes of the Sydney University Calendar from 1860 and the ultra-modern lifts with glass on all four sides.

Andrew Cortese, managing partner at Grimshaw, explains the thinking. "F23 incarnates Burley Griffith and Leslie Wilkinson's intention for Eastern Avenue, a park boulevard of pure sandstone, aligned with an ensemble of functionary buildings emerging from an undulating landscape, giving address and prospect over Victoria Park and a distinctive visual prominence to the city."

That means it fits in nicely with its surroundings.