New Deakin Hall, Monash University

Over the last few years our office has worked with Monash Uni­ver­si­ty to upgrade the facil­i­ties for over 2000 stu­dents who reside at their Clay­ton cam­pus. Housed with­in 8 archi­tec­tural­ly designed 1960s Mod­ernist build­ings, this sig­nif­i­cant accom­mo­da­tion offer­ing has been upgrad­ed to meet the demands of stu­dent life in for the next 20 plus years. 

Being sol­id mason­ry con­struc­tion, and con­tain­ing orig­i­nal details, ser­vices and con­struc­tion method­olo­gies, this com­plex project has been designed and detailed to enable com­pact con­struc­tion time­lines that fit with­in uni­ver­si­ty hol­i­days.

The diverse pro­gram address­es a broad range of spaces includ­ing stu­dent bed­rooms, bath­rooms and kitchens as well as sup­port spaces for col­lege heads and DDA res­i­dences. Each build­ing has been stripped back to their struc­tur­al ele­ments and rebuilt in a high­ly eco­nom­i­cal and effi­cient man­ner, whilst allow­ing for tech­no­log­i­cal upgrades and a mod­ern aes­thet­ic overlay.

The rein­vig­o­ra­tion of the inte­ri­or design iden­ti­fies each col­lege, whilst relat­ing to its mod­ernist archi­tec­tur­al her­itage and beau­ti­ful­ly native land­scape envi­ron­ment seen in the sur­round­ing cam­pus. Engag­ing with the large­ly inter­na­tion­al stu­dent body, the spaces use a colour palette extrap­o­lat­ed from native plant­i­ngs, lay­ered in shades of soft gum greens and greys. The palette evolves from col­lege to col­lege to give indi­vid­ual iden­ti­ties whilst relat­ing still to landscape.

Cre­at­ing con­tained apart­ments, many of the spaces are com­pact and thus a series of cus­tom join­ery ele­ments are designed to meet­ing the needs for stu­dent liv­ing. Cus­tom robes, study desks and bath­room van­i­ties care­ful­ly address details from study­ing, charg­ing devices, stor­age, hang­ing clothes, wash­ing dish­es and stor­ing even large trav­el suit cases.

The project address­es every small detail, whilst the accu­mu­la­tion of these across 8 stu­dent accom­mo­da­tion build­ings rep­re­sent a sub­stan­tial under­tak­ing in scale.

See addi­tion­al work with Monash Uni­ver­si­ty — Brain­park and Canopy Con­struc­tion.