University of Melbourne
New Student Precinct

First Peoples Engagement, Research and Insights

Student perspectives from 45 First Nations language groups are infused into the raw materiality of the precinct through an extensive co-creation process.

Completion / 2023
Client / University of Melbourne 
Location / Victoria

The University of Melbourne’s Student Precinct aims to achieve an enhanced student experience through strategies of reconciliation, diversity, inclusion, and connection, with embedded scalability from festival to everyday ‘chill-out’ modes.

As part of a comprehensive Indigenous Australians engagement strategy, over 45 First Nations language groups were consulted to ensure that the design of the Student Precinct was informed by their voices. This cultural understanding embraces a concept of ‘Reconciliation at Scale’, and as a signature project of the University’s Elevate RAP, is tangibly activated within the built fabric.

Underlying this is a ‘Welcome Terrain’ - a network of connective gathering spaces paved in a patchwork of local stone that signify reconnection with the ‘lost’ ground - and inclusion of a water story narrative from the precolonial waterway through the site.