Queen's College Residences
These bold residences create a strong sense of community and fraternity amongst graduate students who live there. They reflect the tradition of the landscaped quad, both within Queen’s College itself and its antecedents in England, whilst framing an outdoor courtyard as the communal space for its occupants.
A continuous outdoor circulation route, protected by a shifting colonnade, acts as an impromptu social space overlooking the courtyard like the theatre dress circle. The size and scale of the colonnade and its openings is both grand and intimate, and allows students to freely associate between the building and the landscape. The intense glazed green brick of the outer facade mirrors the lush green sporting fields at the heart of the college precinct and through its colour merges with its context.
The synthesis of good insulation and orientation, an open circulation route and operable windows means for most of the year the residences are passively heated and cooled. This is the first stage of an Academic Centre and Graduate Residence at Queen’s College at the University of Melbourne. A combination of single and shared apartments provides accommodation for fifty graduate students.
- Traditional Custodians Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people
- Client Queen's College, University of Melbourne
- Location Parkville, Melbourne
- Project Duration 2010 – 2012
- Floor Levels 5
- Floor Area 2,717 sqm
An open colonnaded edge screens this community of fifty graduate students from a central landscaped public court, while also revealing movement back and forth, gatherings on the balconies and snatches of conversation.
Referring to modernist social housing models, it translates the idea of 'streets in the sky' to a more intimate and convivial scale – the balcony is an impromptu social space.
