Principles are propositions that serve as foundations for a system of behaviour. In guiding our behaviours, they also guide decision-making around how we structure our environments, whether organisational or spatial. In this guest blog, Steve Baty illustrates the relationship between principles, purpose, and the built environment in the context of university development.

University of Sydney Main Quadrangle, built 1885.

The idea of designing a university campus from scratch is an intriguing one as it affords us with the fairly rare opportunity to ask the questions: What is this university for? Who is it for? and how best to deliver on its purpose?

Typical master planning and architectural work within a university campus is constrained by decisions made decades or even centuries ago. Some universities sprawl across the landscape in vast campuses, full of sandstone and trees, mixed with more modern structures. Others sit concentrated in tall towers on city blocks. Still others – such as Melbourne’s RMIT or Savannah’s College of Art & Design – integrate into the fabric of the city across multiple sites.

For designers, those decisions are no longer able to be challenged. But in a new university, in a fresh location, these questions are open.

I read recently that universities are an investment in national prosperity. In many countries with uncomplicated economies (Australia being one), universities provide a pathway to the sorts of advanced activities that increase economic complexity and contribute to GDP, wages growth and productivity gains. However, the same is true for trade schools, technical colleges, and the arts.

And so again, we can ask: what is the purpose of this university? 

The University of Sydney, for example, was founded on a principle of religious tolerance. This led to the decision to not appoint a Theological Professorship as this wouldn’t have been in line with the founding principle. As a balance, it also influenced the decision for the campus to allow religious colleges to be set up and so there are residential colleges such as St Andrew’s, Sancta Sophia, and St John’s, all within the grounds of the University. 

St Andrews College, University of Sydney

A university campus, in whatever form, is not merely a collection of functional buildings serviced by shared infrastructure. Why it exists; for whom it exists; and how it delivers can and should be used to shape the architecture and topology of the space; the infrastructure necessary to support it and them; and the points of integration out into the wider community – physical, intellectual and conceptual.

It is only when we begin thinking about universities in the context of their specific purpose – rather than a generic purpose of ‘higher education’ – that we can begin to challenge the established function-driven campus masterplans that dominate the sector today. 

We can take these questions a step further and include secondary impacts such as the material intensity and embodied carbon characteristics of the campus; the energy efficiency and operating conditions of the buildings and facilities; impacts on equity, inclusion, accessibility; and waste generation and recovery. All of which can become significant influences over the masterplan and architecture if given consideration early enough in the project.

Engaging with prospective staff, academics and students who might ultimately live, work, and study at the new university and draw on their experiences with other institutions can help answer these questions of purpose, and refine and deepen these principles into something more tangibly embodied in the structures and spaces of the university.

Ultimately, the objective is to broaden the design perspective to include the new university’s purpose, its context, and the needs of the people who will use it to create something unique, effective, and significant.

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Steve Baty is CEO and Founder of Meld Collective. He is recognised as one of the global leaders in the use of design approaches to the integration of customer-centredness and systems design with architectural and engineering practice. He has spent the past decade driving forward the customer experience of Sydney’s new Metro rail service informing the design of four Metro services and helping to shape the way stations and precincts are designed to ensure that the customer experience is paramount. Steve is former-CEO of the Australian Design Council and a co-author of Designing Tomorrow.

Feature image: Proposed campus for Nalanda University, India. Allies & Morrison Architects.