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A Gateway in the Landscape

The UQ St Lucia Campus is recognized worldwide for its distinctive campus character with a particularly sub-tropical landscape character and the beautiful surrounding riverfront precinct of lush riverine gardens, lakes, mature trees and playing fields. Our proposal is for a new eastern gateway which respects, enhances and gives precedence to this landscape experience. We have recognized that the new Eleanor Schonell Bridge along with the relocation of the City Cat Terminal to the bridge terminus, has seen a significant new gateway to the campus emerge and that this is both gateway and segue through the landscape from the bus station to the more dense urban experience of the campus proper. Our proposal is based on 3 key concepts;

· A heightened landscape experience

· A connected and flexible journey

· Readily available, low technology, minimal impact landscape/architecture hybrid structure

A Heightened Landscape Experience

We believe that this is the place for a gentle, slow and understated architecture and landscape. Where the journey from the urban campus to the bus station and ferry terminal can offer respite through heightening the awareness of the immediate landscape and views beyond, particularly to the lake and aspects of the city skyline. Whilst we recognize that many are often in a hurry between places along this journey, there is also incidental interaction; between people, needing places to briefly retreat from the more busy pedestrian traffic, and; between people and the landscape. We have purposely eschewed any particularly heroic or simplistically overt, over-scaled engineering or object based solutions. We feel they would only serve to divide the landscape and serve the journey as an efficient experience we propose a series of small lightweight bridges using readily available “off the shelf” precast concrete systems, spanning between existing ground and new gently terraced mounds. Pedestrians may either move swiftly or take a more relaxed amble, taking time to talk with a friend, enjoy the view or seek prospect over something which may have caught their eye. We propose that the landscape of this journey also recognize the differing characters along the journey from the forest character to the east, the wetlands character and the grassy mound experience to the west. The connected bridges themselves are seen as something experienced more unconsciously and are seen as incidental to the pleasure to be taken from nature.

We also propose that the moment of the climb from the path to the urban campus be a Propylaea, where there is a celebration of that moment of transition from nature to built form or vice versa, a sense of entry or departure. The original Propylaea of the Acropolis is approached by a steep descent from the plain below and was the gateway structure to that place of higher thinking. Similarly our Propylaea, as in the original, incorporates the stepped pathway (and elevator) and is the segue experience from the landscape to the campus proper. In this instance of a hybrid landscape and architecture character, with terraces emerging out into the wider landscape offering places of respite where the prospect over the lake can be enjoyed.

A Connected and Flexible Journey

Whilst the principle purpose of this work is to link the campus and the bus station and ferry terminal at specific points, an analysis of the various movements along other existing paths and how they connect this principle desire line will indicate that there are a much wider range of pedestrian movements than might immediately seem apparent. We are also aware that future development of the campus may see other connections emerge to the north. Our proposal, by using smaller, modest, linked bridge elements affords a wide range of varying paths which people may use as well as offering those from or to the south west a way of avoiding wet and flooded ground, not otherwise shown or required by the briefing documents. The shorter bridge journeys and terraced mounds also offer the opportunity to visually and physically connect to the landscape, whether by sitting on the terraces to enjoy the view, taking time to catch up with a colleague or friend or enabling a walk out to the grassy hillside to enjoy the sun in winter or the inviting deep shade of a tree in summer. We have also been mindful of the more leisurely and public use of this part of the campus, where a structure or experience which is only about making a journey efficient is irrelevant and where the bridges and terraced mounds might be seen as places of prospect, rather than simply places for a fast walk.

Readily Available, Low Technology, Minimal Impact, Landscape/Architecture Hybrid Structure

In thinking of how we might minimize impact on the beauty and very sensitive nature of this place, not just visually, but also on the ecology during construction, and ensuring that the time and budget constraints could be met with minimal risk and maximum value for the University and the pedestrian experience, we considered many options from very bespoke and highly engineered/high technology structures to the use of varying prefabricated and more standardized systems and materials. Our position for a landscape journey to be the primary experience and that structure/s should be deferential or understatedly complimentary to that influenced our idea to use very readily available proven technologies, which would also enable us to minimise physical impact during construction, including the need for larger and heavier plant and equipment during a period when heavy rain could likely be expected.

Conceptually we propose to use materials which can ultimately and in a minimal maintenance manner, be claimed by and absorbed into, the landscape. UQ’s traditional bluestone and/or dark grey concrete walls, pathways and terraces, dark copper coloured steel structure, minimal and organic in form, stainless steel arbour cables and wires for plants and creepers, dark copper coloured lightweight transparent balustrades of irregular pattern and highly polished aluminium sheeting to the walkway roofs where the landscape and movements of pedestrians is reflected. The Propylaea will be the most visible structure, prominent on the small hill and ambiguously seeming to emerge from the ground whilst also obviously a built form. At night we propose very low level and focussed lighting to minimise impact on local fauna with an emphasis on discreetly illuminating the pathways and sufficient lighting to enable facial recognition for personal safety. The Propylaea would also incorporate subtle wide spread low glare bud lights within the arbour planting along the cables to softly illuminate the arbour planting.

Soft and Slow/ Hard and Fast – Making a Community

Underpinning all of the work in this proposal is to offer all users of, in and around this place the opportunity to see the UQ Campus gardens as connected spaces, where structures such as this minimise their tendency to divide or impose on these green spaces. Further and most importantly, by doing so we also create an opportunity for the campus community to use and experience this place as they wish; to expedite their journey, or to linger; to walk and connect in any way they wish; to take the time to observe and enjoy the nature of this place, or to remain in complete ignorance or oblivious to what is around them as they focus on making that bus or getting to that lecture, tweeting, instagramming or checking their facebook status. We do not propose a prescriptive experience, where every journey becomes “ground hog day”, but rather that each experience, even if made day after day over many years, can offer dimensions and insights anew; people observed to become, over time, acquaintances, then friends and who knows what else. We see this place as a new social space where the quality of the walk, amble, jog or mad dash, the connections made, lost or renewed are a part of what contributes to the making of community; in this instance by a primacy for the experience of this landscape a particularly memorable UQ community.