(COUNTRY) Wurundjeri
In the famous fifteenth-century painting La Città ideale di Urbino, a rotunda sits symmetrically on rigorously paved ground, with a harmonious backdrop of palazzi.1 It’s one of many utopian visions that propose rational, human-scaled architecture as key to civilized urbanity. Although it is 500 years and half-a-world distant from the project I’m standing in, it doesn’t seem that far away in intent, or critical moves. The Student Precinct Project at the University of Melbourne deploys the same tactics of organizing ground plane, centrality, view and perspectival drama, albeit in an energetic, messy varsity version and for a more inclusive understanding of humanity than Renaissance society encompassed.
The principle of diversity underpins this massive project. Contemporary campus design is no longer the province of sole architecture practices, and the University of Melbourne recognized that with a competition brief for a near-whole city block redevelopment of 18,000 square metres, seven student facility buildings (including two libraries and two theatres), and 12,000 square metres
