university : city

In the competitive space of knowledge and education ‘city-making’ and ‘liveability’ are increasingly central to university identity and success.

The university campus is functioning  as a new city place, as a new ecology, where an inter-relational cause and effect is driving the need for;

- clarity and legibility in spatial frameworks,

- universally accessible movement patterns,

- place creation, identity and comfort,

- integrative water catchment, expression and management,

- management of urban heat and urban coolth, and

- material presence and longevity.

Our recent, current and completed work at Murdoch and Curtin Universities expresses these values as the new city and undergirds our recent appointment at Monash University’s Clayton Campus: a new seven and half hectare campus entry project, the Southern Landscape Precinct. Along with University stakeholders, design partners McGregor Coxall, and collaborators E2 Design Lab and Paul Thompson we will be interrogating the project as a new educational ecology, considering;

- the gesture, requirements, functions and values of place,

- the deep and important layers of indigenous learnings through the School of Indigenous Studies, and

- the most current research outcomes in urban water through engagement with the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities at Monash.

The project includes new transport interchange, places of arrival, teaching spaces designed by John Wardle Architects, and the redevelopment of the Alexander Theatre by Peter Elliot Architects.