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What’s the best way to build Australia’s first greenfield university campus in more than 20 years? Great

minds, great plans and great work; layered with architectural creativity, artistic innovation and environmental

sustainability in a subtropical climate. That’s how USC won more than 30 awards for the design and

construction of its built environment. Far from slowing down as it reaches 20 years, construction is

speeding up again, with $67 million in new projects fast-tracked in the past two years.

THERE THEY STOOD, two carpenters, on the edge of a grassy 100-hectare site marked out for Australia’s newest university. It was a hot summer’s day in the Christmas holidays of 1994-95 on the Sunshine Coast, but Pat Evans and Trevor Harch were sweating for a different reason. “It was a swamp!” they recalled two decades later of the low-lying, former sugar cane land at Sippy Downs then known by even these two locals as the middle of nowhere. Mr Evans and Mr Harch were family men and hard workers. “What a combination we were, a born-and-raised Irish Catholic and a Lutheran with German ancestry,” smiled Mr Harch (the Lutheran). But they could not control the weather.

The owners of Evans Harch building company, founded on the Coast in 1977, had a lot at stake. The $10 million first stage of the planned university was then one of the biggest tenders they’d won, about equal in value to their construction of The Wharf Mooloolaba, a retail and tourism precinct.

“We were over the moon to have another job of that size,” said Mr Harch. “It was for two buildings (for administration and academic studies) plus two lecture theatres. Before Christmas we’d been invited to the Maroochydore office for the opening of the tenders – that kind of thing doesn’t happen these days, everything’s secretive and the red tape is worse – and I didn’t know (then Planning President) Paul Thomas very well. But he looked at the results, walked across the room and said, ‘Trevor, congratulations, you’ve won the job.’” The successful contractors were elated and determined. “It was a prestigious job, a university, and everyone around town was saying, ‘Is this thing really going to work? Will it fire up?’”

Within weeks, drenching rains put the pair in the hot seat. “I worked on pricing and Pat worked on building and he’s a guy who’s very much subject to detail,” said Mr Harch. So when the rain fell on their respective homes in the neighbouring suburbs of

Buderim and Tanawha, the men went to check out the uni site. “Pat was down here in a flash, taking photos to show everyone who was on holidays,” Mr Harch laughed. “We’d never seen so much water. And we had to build a building there?!” (December 1994 still has one of the highest recorded rainfall days of any December since on the Sunshine Coast, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.)

Is this thing really going to work? Will it fire up?

But they were on board with some of the best in the business; the resulting combination of local knowledge and global experience provided not only strong foundations for Australia’s first greenfield university in more than 20 years, but also the flexibility to make changes according to growth, funding and other circumstances. Stormwater management, from the digging of swales (open drains) to the creation of a lake system, would become an outstanding element of its grounds maintenance and resilience. As Evans Harch, and later Evans Harch BADGE, went on to win tender after tender, constructing 15 of the 23 significant buildings on campus by 2016 and becoming the Coast’s biggest building firm, USC continued striving to balance its built and natural environments to achieve sustainability – a feat that became a hallmark of its architecture, art and campus development. (See ‘Sustainability’)

These principles were enshrined in the first campus master plan, prepared in 1994-95 by Mitchell/Giurgola and Thorp (MGT) Architects. Professor Paul Thomas recalled the company’s appointment as site master planners and architects for stage one of the then Sunshine Coast University College.

BUILDING THE

FUTURE OF EDUCATION

USC CAMPUS CIRCA 2008 LOOKING TOWARDS THE GLASS HOUSE MOUNTAINS, WITH CHANCELLOR STATE COLLEGE IN THE FOREGROUND48 49

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“We’d advertised internationally and Lindsay Clare and I interviewed

them,” he said. Mr Clare was an award-winning Coast architect and

fellow planning committee member who chaired the USC Council’s

first capital works committee. “We were impressed,” Professor

Thomas said. “They were exciting to listen to. Partner Hal Guida was

one of the principal architects of Australia’s new Parliament House

in Canberra in the 1980s and he explained how they would modify

their approach in a subtropical environment.”

But the firm’s North American roots and Canberra base caused

some flak. “It was quite controversial because all these Queensland

architects wanted to be the ones appointed to build a Queensland

university,” Professor Thomas said. “But we went ahead and the two

buildings were up within 18 months, which the architects had never

done at that pace, on that scale before.”

With the strong support of MGT, the planning committee also

employed South-East Queensland architect Geoffrey Pie to

complement the project. (Even after he retired in 2012, Mr Pie won

another statewide industry award, this time for the enduring design

of his 1986-built home at the Coast’s Peregian Beach.) Professor

Thomas said this formula for teaming architects was repeated to

great effect for subsequent buildings on campus.

As students, staff and the wider community became the long-

term beneficiaries of some stunning design innovations, local

professionals and tradespeople expanded their repertoires from a

residential to an institutional scale. That patch of wallum (sandy

soil heathland, from the Gubbi Gubbi – or Kabi Kabi – word for

the wallum banksia shrub) ended up sprouting the region’s largest

educational institution, including some of the most intriguing and

talked-about architecture, with its physical development alone

costing $290 million in the first 20 years.

For Hal Guida, the USC job was a gift. “In our practice in the United

States, we’d done buildings at quite a few universities. Senior partner

Romaldo Giurgola had been the chair of the school of architecture at Columbia University (New York City) in 1965 and I’d taught at Temple University (Philadelphia), so we jumped at university projects,” said Mr Guida, who had a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from the University of California at Los Angeles. “To be able to plan a new university, to think about how you build a new one in such a beautiful place as the Sunshine Coast, what could be more attractive?

“We took a small team to initiate the process by spending a week on the Coast, visiting the site every day at different times,” he said. “On the first day we took a long walk with environmental scientists who we had selected to advise us on environmentally responsible design and development. Our primary goal was to prepare a master plan that was right for this place: this specific site, the environment and the social culture of the Sunshine Coast.”

Now looking back on 40 years of international experience including large projects in South-East Asia and China, Mr Guida said USC was such a satisfying project that he kept returning, at least every five years, to assist master plan revisions. “We were hoping for what has evolved – a closely-aligned, rich variety of buildings making for a visually stimulating and interesting interplay as you move through the campus,” he said. “The University has done a great job selecting different architects so there is a consistent character but with different expressions based around the same thing, living on the Sunshine Coast. That was the intention of the master plan – not to freeze design or say ‘only use red brick’.”

WE WERE OVER THE MOON TO HAVE A JOB OF THAT SIZE. IT WAS A PRESTIGIOUS JOB, A UNIVERSITY. I WORKED ON PRICING AND PAT WORKED ON BUILDING AND HE’S A GUY WHO’S VERY MUCH SUBJECT TO DETAIL.

TREVOR HARCH

This intention was reflected in the resulting document. The large

volume of almost 100 pages covered background, goals and planning

in detail, with accompanying diagrams and tables – but had barely

three pages for the chapter ‘Controls for future development’. That

chapter’s main items were four-metre wide pedestrian arcades, the

positioning of the library, and a building heights principle (a three-

storey limit that could be exceeded for significant buildings off the

primary spine).

“The six-storey ICT building constructed in 2003 behind the library

was a natural outcome from this planning,” Mr Guida said. “While the

green space retains a low-scale, garden-like environment, buildings

can grow behind that.” Still the tallest building on campus, it was

designed by Noel Robinson and DesignInc in tandem with the nearby

single-storey art gallery and cafe. At the time housing a state-of-the-

art wireless computer network and data centre, its main tenants

remain Information Technology Services and USC International.

The master plan drew inspiration from Thomas Jefferson’s visionary

development of the University of Virginia in the United States in the

1800s. Jefferson, the third US president, had founded that university

to educate leaders in practical affairs and public service, not just

for professions in classrooms and pulpits, and was closely involved

in its linear design – a central green space bordered by parallel

buildings and symbolically focused on a library rotunda at one end.

The grounds were even World Heritage listed. (ref www.virginia.edu)

Professor Thomas, who appreciated architecture, art and

Jefferson’s ideals and inspected the University of Virginia on the

recommendation of Hal Guida, admired the way that university was

constructed to relate to its community of scholars. “USC, however,

also wanted to open itself to the wider community, so we planned our

primary spine – two rows of buildings facing a lawn in the middle –

to open at both ends,” he said. “This retained the human dimension,

where a person at a window in one building could recognise a

person outside the opposite building across the lawn, as well as

the environmental qualities of the area, allowing the movement of

kangaroos, for example, down to a lake and the adjoining Mooloolah

River National Park.”

USC aimed to welcome students, staff and community members at

the site’s north-west entrance, marked by one of its only stands of

trees, and encourage them to enjoy future facilities all the way down

the green to the lake planned for the south-east end. Secondary

building spines were planned laterally.

In 2016, the treed entrance remains (supplemented by profuse native

plantings across the site), the building grid is two-thirds finished, the

lake has been duplicated and the library has taken pride of place in

the middle of the primary spine.

The library now sits opposite the Chancellery, built in 2006 as USC

celebrated its 10th anniversary. The Chancellery was opened the

following year by then Queensland Governor Quentin Bryce at a

function to install John Dobson as the new chancellor, a position he

still holds.

Meanwhile, the secondary spines now reach out on one side to

a five-storey Health and Sports Centre (opened in 2008 by then

Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan, a Sunshine Coast local) and on

the opposite side to a semi-industrial building for practical studies in

civil engineering and paramedic science (from concrete stress tests

to mock car accidents). Alongside this building sits the latest jewel

in USC’s architectural crown, the $37.2 million Engineering Learning

Hub, constructed by Hutchinson Builders and officially opened in

2015 with 3D visualisation technology including the CAVE2TM, the

only facility of its type in the world to be used for teaching as well as

research. (See ‘Innovation’)

In 2014, the master plan’s original design intent came of age one

day in August when more than 8,000 people flocked to USC’s biggest

Our primary goal was to prepare a master plan that was right for this place: this specific site, the environment and the social culture of the Sunshine Coast.

PAT EVANS

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ever open day and new community event, called Imaginarium.

Cutting-edge interactive displays and live entertainment across the

campus inspired potential students and families from hundreds of

kilometres away to connect with the University.

“Architecture was an extremely important decision point in USC’s

history,” Professor Thomas recalled. “From when I became planning

president in March 1994, I had in my mind that we had to become a

university, not a college or an outlying campus of QUT, and we had to

look like a university.” Urged by state bureaucrats to inspect a small

campus of a remote institution for ideas, he was underwhelmed. “It

was all bricks and mortar and all the buildings were the same and

I found it utterly boring. We needed buildings of monumental scale

to signal that this was a university.”

But with the first students expected to walk on to campus at the

start of 1996, Professor Thomas was realistic enough to realise that

lack of time and funding ruled out any sandstone edifices. Instead,

the nod to tradition became big colonnades (pillars) on the first

building, followed by an evolution of novel, modern buildings based

on environmental sustainability. The subtropical design expertise of

Lindsay and Kerry Clare, who in 2010 became the first husband-and-

wife team to win the Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medal,

had a lasting influence. Together, the Clares produced the University’s

recreation club, which was designed and built in 1997 in a record

time of 18 weeks. The Clare Design founders, also now professors at

the University of Newcastle and the Abedian School of Architecture

at Bond University, later shaped USC’s pivotal Chancellery when they

were design directors of Architectus Sydney. “Initial discussions with

Paul Thomas, Romaldo Giurgola and Hal Guida determined that the

University would not rely on sandstone and monument to convey

gravitas,” recalled Lindsay Clare. “Instead, we were collectively

interested in championing subtropical architecture. Environmental

and democratic principles embodied in the master plan allowed the architecture to develop a unique identity intrinsic to its location.”

Professor Thomas would continue to work intensely with Mr Guida and USC Director of Facilities Management Mark Bradley on the campus master plan revisions until Vice-Chancellor Professor Greg Hill took the reins in 2010 for the next chapter.

Mark Bradley remembers reading “a thousand pieces” of the draft master plan in his first week on the job as buildings officer in January 1995. “I never guessed then that I would be involved in the project at such a level over such a period of time,” he said. Mr Bradley had been project managing the construction of Caloundra Council chambers, about 20 kilometres south-east of Sippy Downs, when he was hired by the USC capital works committee (Mr Clare, John Nelson, Professor Thomas and Ron Young).

“The building industry had been in flux for a few years and my wife and I had a conversation about the job offer and whether it would bring our family some stability,” Mr Bradley said. “The Coast was changing from a group of little holiday destinations and fishing villages into a true region. It was starting to generate enterprises. It was gaining momentum with the growing population and amount of money here, both from retirees and young working families. The university was seen as something that would bring the region on. And it did.”

Mr Bradley set the ball rolling on a 20-year career at USC, in January 2015 becoming the first current staff member to achieve the milestone. The Bradleys also watched two of their children graduate from USC, after all three daughters attended school at Siena Catholic College, which opened in 1997 as part of the University precinct. Rebecca last year gained an education degree to become a teacher. Megan, who now works for a large development firm in London, got her first job at major local developer Stockland after an internship in the final year of her USC Business (Marketing) degree in 2006.

HAL GUIDA

TO BE ABLE TO PLAN A NEW UNIVERSITY, TO THINK ABOUT HOW YOU BUILD A NEW ONE IN SUCH A BEAUTIFUL PLACE AS THE SUNSHINE COAST, WHAT

COULD BE MORE ATTRACTIVE?

“It’s been terrific,” Mr Bradley said. “We did offer to support our kids anywhere but two chose USC degrees. And it’s interesting because a lot of their friends went to southern universities but then returned to finish their studies here.”

Back in the mid-1990s, Mark Bradley was astounded by the task at hand. “When I got here some earthworks had been done but there was no water, no sewerage, and regular blackouts,” he said. “I asked Ron Young (former Pro Vice-Chancellor, Finance and Facilities from Central Queensland University), ‘What do you expect us to do?’

“Ron said, ‘Deliver stage one ready for teaching next year. Do whatever it takes.’” That not only meant the buildings (a three-storey and a two-storey), the lecture theatres (tiered seating for 500 in total), a structure for food preparation/dining and a works shed, it also meant any other urgent infrastructure. The 1994 annual report was blunt:

“In view of the short timeframe available, the usual processes from design through to construction of the buildings for Stage 1 of the project were compressed, and overlapped in some instances, so that the buildings will be completed for occupation by the end of 1995. Planning was also commenced for Stage 2, which will be completed in 1997.”

That’s exactly how Trevor Harch remembered it. “The pressure was on,” he said. “It had to be open for the next year; no ifs, buts or maybes. Paul made a speech to me, in his own way. He said, ‘We are the educators and you are the builders. We’ve chosen you because we’ve got faith in you to bring this building home on time and within budget’.” The speech did the trick. “That’s why we kept building the university. Jobs were done on time, within budget and with few hiccups.”

The longevity and consistency of some of USC’s contractors

undoubtedly factored in its success. Facilities staff cite loyal

companies like Hall Contracting and Shadforths Civil Contractors.

In addition, many company bosses and business leaders have also

become USC supporters, offering scholarships to students in their

preferred fields. Cameron Hall, a civil engineer and managing director

of Hall Contracting, is continuing the legacy of his grandparents Les

and Mary Hall, who started the business in 1946. “I am a strong

believer in tertiary education, and was amazed to see this wonderful

university thriving on the Sunshine Coast when I returned from

working overseas in 2005,” said Mr Hall, who gained his degree in

Brisbane in the year USC opened. He

is a current member of the Foundation

Board and supports a scholarship for

engineering students.

Mr Bradley recalled many discussions

“on mobile phones the size of handbags”

as the team tackled the big issues of

water and electricity supplies. “We had to bring a water main here

from seven kilometres away. That was a contentious issue (related

to nearby development) and we had to contribute over $1 million.

We had to take a sewerage main one and a half kilometres to get

into a gravity main. We were pumping sewage every day.”

Power was a double whammy, with the nearest substation 10

kilometres away in beachside Alexandra Headland and with rows

of overhead, high-voltage power mains bisecting the grounds where

buildings were due to rise. (Ironically, these mains did not service

the site.)

“The number of power outages we used to have was ridiculous,”

Mr Bradley recalled. “Every time we’d ring up and say, ‘What’s the

problem?’ and they’d say a tree had fallen or a possum had got

DARREN PERCIVAL ENTERTAINS AT IMAGINARIUM 2014 CONSTRUCTION OF BUILDINGS B AND K (CIRCA 1995)

The pressure was on. It had to be open for the next year; no

ifs, buts or maybes.

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environmental consultants had advised there was a substantial part

of the site we shouldn’t build on, so we allocated space for sport

and recreation then balanced the (estimated) gross floor space in

building groupings to create a good social environment on campus,”

he said, making a 100-hectare master plan sound simple.

The growth of USC’s architectural laboratory was witnessed from

inside and outside its colonnades by Mark Roehrs, the Brisbane-based

education and science sector leader of global design practice HASSELL.

“The Sunshine Coast has always been my family holiday destination

and I’d worked on the Coast for the influential Clares,” said Mr Roehrs,

who has designed university projects across the country since the mid-

1980s. Between 1996 and 2014 he was involved with four at USC: two

science buildings, the Learning and Teaching Hub and USC Gympie.

(See ‘Voices for the next generation’ and ‘Innovation’)

Mr Roehrs said the attitude of people at the University impressed

him from his first experience on campus when he led the design

of the first science building for Daryl Jackson Architecture in

association with Ken Down Architects. It won the Australian Institute

of Architects inaugural state sustainability award in 1998. “USC has

a strong commitment to architects leading the design process and

managing projects through all phases, resulting in excellent design

and quality outcomes,” he said.

“What’s been rewarding is engaging directly with members of the

community – from students and staff to the Vice-Chancellor – about

their needs and aspirations, then seeing them occupy buildings in

transformative ways. We’ve had the opportunity to really explore

innovative learning and sustainable design ideas around subtropical

architecture to express the character of the region.”

The basics of ESD (environmentally sustainable design) were outlined

in the master plan and summarised in the 1995 annual report:

“The design and orientation of the buildings has enabled the

University College to make minimal use of air conditioning

and lighting and, hence, make significant energy savings. The

buildings are situated on the site to take maximum advantage

of the prevailing wind as well as the sun/shade pattern. The

building colours (blues, golds, greens) have been adopted to

blend in with the natural environment.”

Indoor-outdoor spaces – so popular in Sunshine Coast homes

because of the warm, benign climate – have become integral to USC

designs. A third of the area in the HASSELL-designed Learning and

Teaching Hub is for informal student social learning, with sheltered

atrium and deck spaces naturally ventilated through thermal chimneys

BIG BEIZAM BY KEN THAIDAY SENIOR WALLUM BY GLEN MANNING AND KATHY DALY

in the switches. We figured there were 80,000 trees and 3,000

possums between us and Alexandra Headland.” When tolls were

removed from the Sunshine Coast Motorway in 1996, USC bought

two generators from the toll booth complex before it was torn down.

The generators were wheeled around the campus for years, plugged

in during blackouts to needy buildings such as the library for the

computers or the laboratories for the science equipment. “Most of

the buildings were naturally ventilated or you could open windows if

the airconditioning failed,” he said. “But a lot of lecturers were doing

presentations with quite sophisticated projectors and IT for the time,

so sometimes lectures had to be cancelled. When another substation

was built near Mooloolah River National Park in the mid-2000s

our power supply started to even out – but we’ve still got that first

generator. The second one was used at our research centre in Dilli

Village on Fraser Island for 13 years before being decommissioned.”

The battle to remove the overhead power lines involved different

governments, landowners and developers, and is not so fondly

remembered by anyone, including the USC hierarchy. Professor Paul

Thomas said, “It took Mark Bradley and me out of the action for a

long time because of all the interaction with senior bureaucrats and

ministers. They said the cost of going underground was prohibitive

and the cost of going around the grounds was prohibitive, and none

of them wanted to access that kind of money.

“It took a few years of going to the media and into government

offices and it was hard, really hard, but eventually the power was

re-routed around the site.” Professor Thomas explained why USC

was so determined: “It inhibited development, aesthetically it was a

nightmare and there’s research about radiation.”

The issue went down to the wire. Mr Bradley described the day the

power lines came down. “We got rid of them in 1999, in the countdown

to the Sydney Olympics in 2000,” he said. “Pressures were mounting

and we had a contract with the federal and state governments for

the provision of pre-Olympic training at our athletics track. We had

to drop the power lines or we couldn’t put up the throwing nets for

the hammer throw and the discus!”

It only sounded amusing. The re-routing involved sizeable financial

contributions from other stakeholders and affected nearby land

sales, including resumptions. The changeover itself was very serious.

“We had the alternative network energised on the day and they cut

the network over live, which I’d never seen happen,” Mr Bradley said.

“There was an excavator with big pincers that basically cut up the

lines in the air and dumped them.” If things had gone wrong with the

THE POWER LINES COME DOWN IN 1999

main feeder, the entire region might have blacked out. The War of the Worlds-style scene was duly photographed.

Considering how the odds were stacked in the early years, the successful completion of each new building stage was testament to the dedication of the small core staff, their consultants and contractors, from quantity surveyors and hydraulics engineers to painters and labourers. The fact this campus development continued so boldly to 2016 also reflected the foresight of, and adherence to, the 1995 master plan catering for a maximum student population of 15,000 EFTSL (equivalent full time student load) over 25 to 30 years.

Regular updates of the plan enabled necessary changes to the order of buildings, for example, to match funding patterns, advances in technology, regional population growth or types of degrees introduced (which explains why the buildings on the campus map are not in alphabetical order just yet). But that original document remained on track as USC reached recent enrolment milestones alongside Phase III of the plan.

Hal Guida, now a life fellow of the Australian Institute of Architects (2009) and a partner at Guida Moseley Brown Architects, said he was pleased to see the puzzle piecing together after drawing the grid of buildings based on a simple premise, that 12 square metres per full-time student would be required in plant and facilities. “The

USC has taken a position of leadership in the quality of its

built environment. It’s an exemplar and benchmark to the regional

community for larger-scale architecture.

M ARK ROEHRS

and breezeways. When curious kangaroos hopped slowly through the

breezeway, right past students and a huge triple hammerhead shark

sculpture, Mr Roehrs felt his brief was met. The environment, art and

architecture had merged, complementing each other.

The sculpture, called ‘Big Beizam’, was one of the latest additions

to USC’s burgeoning art collection, largely focused on abstract,

contemporary Australian works including Indigenous paintings from

the Western and Central Desert. The shark dance headdress of

bamboo, wood and feathers made by renowned Torres Strait Islander

artist Ken Thaiday Senior, who attended the building opening, was

donated by USC’s long-time art benefactors the Proost De Deyne

family. It also served as a welcome to the Buranga Centre, a study,

cultural and social facility to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait

Islander students. (See ‘Helping make dreams happen’)

Dawn Oelrich, who curated USC’s collection across the campus

and ran its gallery from 2004 to late 2015, said HASSELL had done

amazing work incorporating art into various buildings. “They were

delightful to work with because they got it,” she said. “They knew

that art could work really well in study spaces and they knew what

art did and didn’t need in terms of space and light and temperature

controls. The Learning and Teaching Hub is particularly beautiful –

I tried to curate that building like an art gallery.” Many of the works

shown were donated by Noosa architect John Mainwaring.

To see more art, architecture and environment aligning – this time

vertically – students and staff needed only to look up when the

second science building was designed by HASSELL and built by Evans

Harch in 2011. An endangered local plant, the Wallum allocasuarina

emuina, was used as the focus of a digi-glass installation up the four-

storey stairwell. The panels of photographic images could be seen

from inside and outside the stairwell, the reds and greens of the

Mooloolah River National Park wildflower catching the sunlight.

Artists Glen Manning and his wife Kathy Daly, a USC graduate,

consulted USC’s Genecology Research Group which was working

with developers, conservationists and government experts to

save the plant via seed collection, translocation, replanting and

further research. Opened in 2012 by then Governor of Queensland

Ms Penelope Wensley, the building’s art was cited by Professor

Greg Hill as symbolising the University’s sustainability and regional

engagement goals. It was included in an exhibition by Glen and

Kathy’s The Niche Art team at the USC Gallery in November 2014,

when Dawn Oelrich praised the intersection between art, human

interaction and the built and natural landscapes.

THOROUGHFARES ABOUND

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Ask anyone involved with the development of USC’s campus over 20

years to nominate an outstanding feature, and there’s a spectrum

of answers: the Olympic-standard, 50-metre heated pool adjacent

to the sports stadium and athletics track; the state-of-the-art

technology incorporated into the latest buildings for engineering,

nursing science and creative industries studies; the new blue

$10 million multi-level car park; the translocation of 15 hectares of

heathland habitat to save it from a housing estate; the success of

the lakes in making USC almost self-sufficient in all its water needs

bar drinking water.

In addition to these big-ticket items, however, were the little touches

that meant a lot to the people who loved the University.

Mark Bradley admired an original fig tree that was preserved next

to the entrance sign, and the re-use of the curved tin roof of the

first “tuckshop” shed into a shade structure above the barbecue

by the lake.

Trevor Harch loved the angles and twists of the library “even though

builders normally like doing things that are square and straight”,

and the flat roof of the Innovation Centre, also for its high difficulty

factor. He still checks out the campus when he’s home at Buderim,

but spends much of his retirement at his vineyard in the Barossa

Valley in South Australia, nurturing his Brockenchack wines (named

after his grandchildren).

Hal Guida, continuing to practise in Canberra, liked the smaller-

scale places still developing off the main spine, and the increase

in bird numbers on campus, reflecting the support for biodiversity.

Professor Thomas had his favourite artwork.

Striving for architectural innovation, often as fast and cheaply as

possible, also meant a few missteps and controversies over the

years, as those overseeing the projects explained. Some problems

were amusing; others uncomfortable. As much as USC tried to avoid

air-conditioning, sometimes cavity walls just weren’t enough to

provide cooling effects. Solutions were trialled. The tallest building

inevitably divided opinion, earning nicknames like the cheese grater

PEOPLE ARE PRETTY CREATIVE

AROUND HERE.

MARK BRADLEY

How an architect turned an artist’s eye on USC“Didn’t John Mainwaring come good with the library?” says Professor Paul Thomas, looking at the students streaming in and out of its breezy Queensland verandah on the first floor, dappled by the sunlight through timber slats screening the northern side. A favourite setting for marketing and media photos since it opened in early 1997, the three-storey building with the jagged roof angles has been more than picturesque and functional. It won six awards that year including the prestigious Sir Zelman Cowen Award for Public Buildings from the Royal Australian Institute of Architects.

“That was an award at a national ceremony and it was fantastic,” says Paul. “It gave the Sunshine Coast visibility nationally, in architectural and travel magazines, for our coastal style.” The library is a delight for students, whether they’re reading in beanbags in natural light through towering walls of glass overlooking the campus lawn from the loft, or plugging in their laptops to take notes from more than 110,000 books on offer (or from the digital collection’s 57,000 texts and 142,000 ebooks.) A 2007 photo of the library posted by a past student on the Flickr website was captioned “the funkiest building on the coast”.

Noosa architect, philanthropist and yachtsman John Mainwaring co-designed the building with Lawrence Nield, a professor of architecture in Sydney who master planned that city’s Olympics in 2000 and won the Australian Institute of Architects’ Gold Medal in 2012. The pair worked to a design brief with USC’s foundation librarian Heather Gordon and consultant David Jones from the State Library of New South Wales. It incorporated the then latest information technology facilities and the budget was $6.7 million. John recalls the amazing opportunity for his small practice that had only done domestic and commercial work:

“We tendered for the job with Lawrence Nield & Partners who had done uni work before and I was excited to get it. The library was a pretty innovative building, the first big building done in the Sunshine Coast subtropical style, and it became a highlight of my professional career. Lots of local practices involved in the University graduated to bigger projects, and I went to Brisbane and did the Queen Street Mall in 2000. (He was design director on the $25 million refurbishment of the capital city’s retail hub, winning a Civic Design Award.)

“The USC master plan put the library, as the intellectual brain of the campus, in the middle of the landscape spine and we had to acknowledge those spatial dynamics and make sure it responded well to the site and the climate. We rejected the tradition of internalised libraries and we didn’t want a heavy, ostentatious block. We wanted it to reflect the Coast’s casual, quiet personality and natural environment.

“The collage of materials was adventurous – a steel structure, reinforced concrete block, plywood and glass. It has a lovely translucence at night when all the lights are on. The free-flowing verandah created a grand entry to the library, and the roof was designed like the leaves of a folding book.

“This university put the Sunshine Coast on the map in terms of its cultural inertia. A lot of people were attracted to it as a lifestyle university, with access to beaches – an alternative to Brisbane or

JOHN MAINWARING

and “the whistling building” after a television news crew one day

heard the loud noise made by wind rushing through the external

aluminium grates (initially installed as a protection mechanism in

the early days of wireless technology).

USC’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor from 2000 to 2004, Professor Paul

Clark said one of his funniest moments on campus – in hindsight –

was fronting a TV news camera in front of that Building J to discuss

its completion. “They’d done a great job of getting it finished on time

for the start of semester and were just about to fit it out,” Professor

Clark recalled. “Suddenly the wind blew from the south and this

building started singing. Well, it was more like shrieking. You could

hear it for miles.” Adaptations were made. Changes to car parks

also grabbed media headlines, particularly when some students

protested the introduction of paid parking in 2013. That measure

has since funded vital infrastructure to cater for growth.

But the people behind USC’s physical development had to thrive off

calculated risk to achieve their goals – circumstances demanded it.

When 524 students first began studying under the vaulted ceilings

of those first two buildings in 1996, the master plan was predicting

enrolments to climb to 2,000 students “by the turn of the decade”.

Instead, annual reports showed this figure was reached by 1998

(1,946 students). Numbers almost quadrupled in two years. USC

would become Australia’s fastest growing university for many years,

setting the scene for the fast-tracking of construction stages and

expansion of its footprint to Hervey Bay, Noosa, Gympie, Fraser

Island, Caboolture, North Lakes and South Bank in Brisbane.

“USC has always pushed its boundaries,” said Mark Bradley. “We’re

not fulfilling mediocrity. We’re getting out of our comfort zone

and bringing on new forms of research laboratories and teaching

spaces. We’ve always built space knowing that we’re going to have

to grow. We knew we’d outgrow the library one day so we did that

high-level bridge from it straight into the ICT building to increase the

collection space by another 1,000sqm. People are pretty creative

around here.” ■

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The pulse of a University – a curator’s perspective

“So, what’s your favourite piece?” It’s a vexed question for long-time USC Gallery curator Dawn Oelrich. Until she retired in late 2015, Dawn was in charge of a collection of more than 600 artworks – from paintings and prints hung on academic office walls to mixed media installations across the campus. She

literally can’t go past a piece called ‘Pulse’ – it’s cemented into the courtyard outside the glass sliding door of the gallery, offering a burst of fiery colour and swaying movement to the imposing aluminium facade of the ICT building it fronts.

The seven-metre-high red resin rods were installed in 2007 by Melbourne artist Konstantin Dimopoulos after the University received an unexpected donation from the Lee Graff Foundation in California, with assistance from Arija Austin, wife of foundation USC Council member and former Queensland Art Gallery chair, the late Richard Austin AO OBE. “We got hundreds of people crammed into this space on a cold winter’s night that year for the official unveiling, so we could see the rods take seven minutes to absorb the fading light and start glowing. They made this lovely kinetic sound moving in the breeze,” Dawn recalls fondly. Volunteer Merle Harris, welcoming people at the front counter, adds: “Yes, they looked just like a cane fire.”

Explaining the artwork’s nod to the Sunshine Coast’s sugarcane farming history, Merle is one of the hundreds of art devotees and community-minded people, often retirees, who have volunteered their time to boost USC’s artistic engagement with students, staff and outsiders who have visited the gallery since it was just a space under the library. Brimming with information, Merle says she, her husband and five children all have degrees (hers was a BA Fine Arts Honours) “and that’s why I think it’s good to be doing things at a university, especially this university which has a really strong community feel.” A silversmith who designs jewellery, Merle discovered USC’s original gallery space after she moved to nearby

PULSE BY KONSTANTIN DIMOPOULOS

the Gold Coast. Like most of the professionals practising on the Sunshine Coast, it was not a ‘suit and tie’ university. People came up to me years later and said how much they loved working in the library. I recently heard Thomas Keneally (Australian novelist who wrote Schindler’s Ark) say education should be a birth right, not a paid privilege, and I really believe that. That, to me, is what the library stands for. It’s not a monument to the elite; it’s a workers’ building.”

John, semi-retired from his firm JMA Architects, became an Honorary Doctor of USC in 2013 as he continued working to share his four decades-plus of design experience. While moving between houses, he decided that USC should benefit from his lifelong passion for art collecting and donated hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of paintings and prints to ensure they could remain on display to the public as a unified collection. Included were many abstract and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander works and significant artists such as Sally Gabori and Lawrence Daws. A series of 18 prints from Arnhem Land (Maningrida) is one of the most culturally valuable.

When some of the collection was exhibited at the USC Gallery in 2014, curator Dawn Oelrich highlighted John’s accompanying donation of diaries describing how the art had influenced his architectural style. She said: “This historical context is extraordinarily valuable for USC as a teaching institution, for our design, education, public policy, town planning and engineering students but also for the broader community. The exhibition shows an art collection created by a person with a fine eye for art, aesthetic and design.”

John, who studied art before architecture, said it deeply influenced his philosophy. “I discovered I could learn about the landscape and the universe through Aboriginal art,” he recalled. “They understand the land and water flow so well. I was involved in designing the Mornington Island Arts Centre (in Queensland’s Gulf of Carpentaria) and witnessed the Indigenous women’s art movement there, including the great painter Sally Gabori.”

He is still collecting, most recently textiles from Asia, and hopes an architectural school will one day be established at USC.

GUNGARA BY SAMUEL NAMUNJDJA

Buderim in late 1999. She was surprised, then delighted, to be roped

into a shift on the first day she offered, by the gallery’s foundation

director Dr Lisa Chandler (now Senior Lecturer in Art and Design)

who was then juggling teaching and research duties with operating

the gallery and curating exhibitions. Merle remembers one innovative

exhibition where everything was at a child’s eye level.

“There was a big sand tray in the middle of the gallery and the

kids loved raking it,” she said. Perhaps the idea came full circle

15 years later when the Imaginarium festival included a giant

sandpit and children’s art activity outside the current standalone

gallery, built in 2004.

As noted in the 2004 annual report, the University and the community

raised half a million dollars to construct the gallery, which attracted

7,295 people and 50 new volunteers in its first year. In 2015, more

than 15,000 people enjoyed 11 exhibitions. The University of the

Third Age, entrenched at USC for its two decades, also has strong

Gallery links. U3A volunteer tutor, art historian and former architect

Dennis Panchaud has given many public talks there, including one

that sold out in 2013 as part of its Art and Architecture lecture series.

For Dawn Oelrich, the curator’s role was a short-term, part-time

contract that kept growing. The inaugural director of the Redcliffe

Art Gallery, south of the Sunshine Coast, who celebrated more than

10 years of service at USC, nominates two other favourite artworks:

a 2001 ‘Untitled’ painting by Thomas Tjapaltjarri, of concentric circles

and lines giving an effect of rolling movement (donated by USC

foundation Dean of Business Professor Andy Hede); and a series

of paintings by Gloria Petyarre called ‘Mountain Devil Dreaming’

(donated by John Mainwaring). “They are the tracks of a lizard on

the sand and they make me laugh every time I see them,” she says.

Dawn, who has degrees specialising in arts administration and

European art history, is meticulous in her work. She suddenly

disappears out the back of the gallery and returns with a special

ruler. The alignment of a photograph has caught her eye. She places

the ruler on the wall and checks to see if it is plumb as she continues

to reminisce. “The gallery was set up to show student and staff

work, as well as introduce local and touring exhibitions,” she says. An

annual multimedia showcase of the results of three years of study

by art and design students, including Best Portfolio awards, is now

one of the most popular regular displays. “Meanwhile our permanent

collection started getting some lovely donations from well-known

artists and collectors including Phillip Harding, a Noosa developer,

who kindly lent the University about 30 big works over the years.

We’ve since sought and acquired our own 2D and 3D work and the

collection is now worth $3.7 million.”

Dawn recalls her first task was auditing the artworks in the eight

buildings on campus at Sippy Downs. “Now when I audit, I do three

campuses and 23 buildings. The University has grown so rapidly and

enormously that we sometimes have to hold our breath. Renovations

are always going on, whole departments are being moved ... if an

artwork stays in one place for a little while it makes me happy.” The

task is made a little more difficult by the subjective nature of art.

“We’ve got some provocative works that I couldn’t hang because

people kept hiding them behind cupboards, despite their huge value,” she smiles, mentioning an Adam Cullen and a Clifton Pugh. Dawn doesn’t really mind, even when people persist in calling the ‘Pulse’ sculpture “those red sticks”. She looks again. “At least they recognise it and know that’s where the gallery is.”

PAUL THOMAS

From little things…Professor Paul Thomas recalls: “I was delighted with the incorporation of our art collection on campus over time. My favourite piece is still ‘Sower asking spirit for seeds’ (a basalt sculpture by Zimbabwean artist Nicholas Mukomberanwa acquired by USC in 1996). It was our first art piece and it was in my office until the day I left. It was just so symbolic to me; the hand and the seeds. I thought, ‘That is exactly what we are trying to do as a university.’ The Chancellor was shocked by the $15,000 cost but it’s now worth a lot more.”

Development award no urban myth for USCIn 2013, the University was a joint winner of the Wildcard Award from the Urban Development Institute of Australia (Queensland). The award recognised USC’s significant contribution to the urban development industry and the community; its commitment to best-practice urban design and sustainable development, and its encouragement of creative and artistic flair in campus development. It found: “USC has a distinct ‘sense of place’, which has been achieved through sensitivity to the needs of the regional ecosystem, as well as meeting the needs of campus staff, students and the wider community.”

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