The University of Melbourne Student Precinct, Parkville, Victoria
Built on the land of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people
Aspect Studios and Glas Urban
It is on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung land that I meet James Wilson of Lyons and Mark Gillingham of GLAS for a tour of the long-awaited, recently completed and now multi-award-winning University of Melbourne Student Precinct. Members of the university community are setting up for the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, with stalls, food trucks and performances planned to occupy the central amphitheatre, lawns, courtyards, and terraces.
Prior to arriving, I had received a briefing from Kirsten Bauer of Aspect Studios, whom alongside Wilson and Gillingham, cited the collaboration model between Lyons Architecture, Koning Eizenberg Architecture, Aspect Studios, NMBW Architecture Studio, Greenaway Architects and Greenshoot Consulting, Glas Urban and Architects EAT as the foremost innovation of the project. A distinguishing feature of the collaboration is the project’s two-year First Nations Engagement Strategy led by Greenaway and Greenshoot.
In Melbourne, the form of collective design authorshipan inviting and permeable precinct – distinctly “of Melbourne” - with discrete architectural identities commissioned to appear as if they had emerged over time.
