MGS and Turf design collaborated to design a campus with a new ideology of creating a campus with the sight of the future. A settlement for a community to live, work and study in one place with all the facilities they require for every day. The project of the University of Canberra Campus is estimated to 5 billion dollars with all the developments under the commercial, institutional, recreational and residential zones. The project mainly aims to develop the surrounding community of Belconnen, which is one of the districts of the Australian Capital Territory and mainly covers Canberra suburbs, where the project is located mainly and would help the community to have all its facilities and an upgraded lifestyle.
University of Canberra Campus Masterplan is designed to accommodate a total population of 45,000 with 12,000 residents, 15,000 students, and 18,000 for business and commercial part. The campus is designed in a way that would eventually lead to educating the whole community as every person on the campus would have the access to every facility for living a certain lifestyle they aspire to live hence resulting in people with an educated lifestyle. The whole project is a kind of investment for the future as developed areas with people having even and equal type of lifestyle with no restrictions.
The Masterplan is designed as a 20-year Masterplan considering all the possible changes that can occur within those 20 years and the planning could fulfill all the aspects of changes in terms of all facilities while keeping up with the technological changes and growth in population also. The growth of the campus in terms of the population would not affect the character of the whole campus and would be fulfilled with all the possible expansions for the same retaining the original theme of learning, health, housing, earning, and living.
The built-up area is mostly divided into 2 parts, which are university facilities and commercial facilities, where 60,000 square meters is provided to university facilities and 20,000 square meters to commercial facilities or buildings. There are sports and recreation facilities that are not only for the students in the university but also the residents so that there are no boundaries of communication or in terms of interaction within the community. As areas are assigned for multifunctioning, this kind of arrangement of interaction not only benefits the public but also saves up the land that could have been wasted in defining boundaries and which would tend to remain empty at some times of the day.
The whole campus is divided into 9 neighboring zones:
- Northwest health
- Campus community north
- University park
- Campus west
- Campus community south
- Local center and enterprise
- Campus core and community hill
- Northeaster health
- Sports
Different zones in the campus are connected with corridors, walkways, and light rails which lets the public commute to different zones. The whole project was targeted as to be having majorly dominance of pedestrians over private vehicles. As looking toward the future the campus is made to attain sustainability by using fewer private vehicles and promote public or active transport systems. The campus supports the existing ecology and biodiversity by maintaining a high quality of public space with the promotion of flora and fauna of the surrounding and targeting the net-zero emission campus.
The streets of the campus are interconnected with legible pedestrians aligned with bushes which clears the way for finding problems. It contains primary streets for main vehicular access, secondary streets for internal access from the primary streets, local streets to access the core of the campus, and shared or slow streets that promote pedestrians to access the facilities.
The University of Canberra Campus is a kind of small-town within a town with all the cultural facilities for every age group on the campus. The public plaza promotes the interaction even more within the build entities and this plaza acts as public hubs for the students as well as for the residents living within the campus. Pop-up events, retail, hospitality, student’s events, festivals all of the cultural aspects would promote educated living. Familiar surroundings will promote usage of public spaces even at midnight and because of that safety in public spaces would be maintained.
“All encompassing community- focused campus on which people can live, work and study”
The University of Canberra would be a new kind of experience in terms of socializing, educating, having public interaction of various age groups, living a sustainable lifestyle, and promoting healthy living while creating a sustainable living style and promoting a healthy environment.
Citation-
- University of Canberra Campus Masterplan.(website).Available at: https://www.canberra.edu.au/campus-master-plan
- “University of Canberra’s bush campus to get $5 billion transformation”. 5 April 2021. Available at: https://architectureau.com/articles/university-of-canberras-bush-campus-to-get-5-billion-transformation/
- Eric Baldwin. “MGS and Turf Design $5 Billion University of Canberra Campus Masterplan Transformation”. 6th may 2021. Available at: https://www.archdaily.com/960897/mgs-and-turf-design-5-dollars-billion-university-of-canberra-campus-masterplan-transformation
