 Ladies and gentlemen welcome to this evening. My name is Andrew Roberts. I'm one of the deans here at ANU. I'm Dean of the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, and it's my great pleasure to be your host this evening. First I'd like to acknowledge and celebrate the first Australians on whose traditional lands we meet and pay respects to the elders of the Nungahual people past and present. I don't know about you, but I love the ANU. I think it's a fantastic place and I think I was asked to to host this evening because my reaction when the business of the redevelopment of Union Court was first pitched at the senior management group was one of unbridled enthusiasm. I think this is probably one of the most exciting things I've seen in my time here at the ANU. It's a real wonderful reimagining of our campus, and I'm very enthusiastic about it, but of course as a university community we consult, we talk to each other, we realize that we are not the repositories of all knowledge. We have to get feedback from the community, from students, from staff, from the broader community about how our campus looks, and so this proceeding tonight is part of that process. A large number of people have been consulted over this. Something like 1400, I understand, have actively engaged in the process around the Union Court development, and I realize most of you here tonight because you were engaged in that process and care very much about how this campus looks and feels and how we reinvented for the future. So this showcase tonight is an opportunity to continue with that engagement. We'll have three speakers to present to you how your input has led to the proposals as they stand. For example, we will have a swimming pool as a result of, well, should I have said that? Yes! The plan is to have a swimming pool because the campus community wants a swimming pool. So that's one example of how you've been listened to. So really it's a chance to hear from the hierarchy and from the design team about how we've gone about this, and I'm looking very much forward to this. We'll have tonight's proceedings in two parts. The first part will be about 40 minutes with three speakers giving the pitch, and then I will compare a little later on the sofa. A conversation with you where you'll be able to ask questions of four key players in proceedings. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce the first speaker. It's our Deputy Vice Chancellor Academic, Marnie Hughes Warrington. You've read the bio in the booklet, so I won't say much, but I'm about to go off on study leave, and I'm going to go and write my first book. I'm a scientist, so we write research papers rather than books, but Marnie has written six books, so those of us who are in that game are very impressed by that. They say that behind every Deputy Vice Chancellor is a property developer. Actually, they say that about Vice Chancellors and Deans as well, but here's Marnie's chance to pitch to you the vision as it stands for now for the Union Court developments. Marnie. Thanks Andrew. I want to welcome you to a world in which 28 million learners have connected to the Khan Academy. Welcome to a world in which last week, edX welcomed its five millionth learner. Welcome to that world in ANU because 17 months ago we joined edX, and in that time we've had 125,000 learners from every nation on Earth learn with us. This university will be 70 years old next year, and at that time we'll have graduated 100,000 students. 70 years, 100,000 students, 17 months, 125,000 students. Welcome to the world of digital disruption. This is an important world, and we are part of it, and not just a follower, but a leader in that world. The truth is I know this about ANU, that we don't follow we lead because you told us this. When we went out two years ago and we asked you advice, how do you want to learn? How do you want to teach? How do you want to research at ANU? The thing that you told us most was this is a place of ambitious dreams. If you don't believe me, I want you to come back with me to 70 years ago. 70 years ago we here would be standing in a paddock. Down that way is Canberra High, down that way is Old Canberra House, and in between there is big dreams. I've seen the archives from that time, Roxanne fortunately showed me photo albums, where a group of people sat around a table and said, let's create a university. And not only any university, but the best university in the world. And so they sat around the table and they created this university and then audaciously they put together photo albums because their job was to bring professors from all over the world to this big empty field of dreams. Canberra High down there, Old Canberra House down there, and nothing in between. It took an incredible act of audacity to reach out to the world, to actually seek the best in the world and to bring them here. And the great thing about ANU was that those professors, that community actually built this campus. This is our moment where we get to remember and pay respect to that dream. Because let's go forward and see how ambitious the dream has been since then, the Nobel Prizes. All of the research discoveries and more recently, the ambition of our flexible double degrees, nearly 10 years of PHB enrolments, 240 journal articles by those students. This is a place which lives its motto, first to know the nature of things. If you're first to know the nature of things, you have to be ahead of where the world is. 28 million learners, 5 million learners, the world is changing rapidly. And I'm confident that we're not running behind it, we're running with it and we're going to run ahead of it. When we asked your advice about how we could do that, you came back with some very good sage advice to me. You said, that's great Hughes Warrington, but the wireless doesn't work. I love your idea that students could create MOOCs, but there isn't any place where we can do that without being reigned on. I would love to dream and create a makerspace and accelerator to get students to make things, to do things, but my classroom has no windows, no airflow and one electricity outlet. Is there anybody here from AD Hope? I feel really sorry for you. So here we were thinking, wow, we're a university built upon ambitious dreams, we came out of dry fields, we created all of these things, Nobel Prizes Research, PHB, incredible approaches to research, to education, to public policy and there's no wireless. There are no windows. There's 1,500 students who missed out on a bed, a residential place in our campus this year. And I'm not the only one, Roxanne, that when I get to a certain part of Chifley Library and I think, great, I can borrow a book, it's in Menzies and I have to walk from one end of the campus to another. I'm a lazy borrower, I want them to come to me. The dream is big but sometimes the reality makes it hard to catch the dream. You all told us we have big ambitions, we want those ambitions to be realised, but sometimes we feel like the physical environment does not reflect the pride that we have in this university. We want to be able to display our research achievements. We want to show people that a library is just as important now as it was before. One million visitors in 2014 to our libraries, one million. We want to be able to use classrooms where we can actually engage students in discussion. We want them to actually come along and participate and lead the learning and the teaching with us. In order to do those things, those ambitious dreams have to take flight in a re-imagination of a core part of our campus. So it was fields, it became a car park as you'll hear later, it then became Union Court. It does not match the ambition of this university and we need to turn that around. So over two years we've asked your views, ambition you said. The physical environment has to match the strategy. I have to be able to bring visitors here and they have to know how great this place is. I need places where I can collaborate, I need places where I can teach appropriately and yes I need wireless. We'll talk about the swimming pool. But the truth is that many of you said these other elements are core to being a great university and it's time to remake that image. And we're not just making it for ourselves here and now or for the 100,000 people that have graduated. We're actually making it for the more than 125,000 people who've actually never visited this campus. Because this ANU is not just a Canberra ANU anymore, it's a global ANU. And I would like to be able to visit and invite all of those people to come to this place and say, of course ANU was the place that created that incredible approach to learning. So we need to do these things. We need to do it now. The last time that Union Court was renovated was 1972. Yeah, some of you did not exist back then. I think it's about time, don't you? Some of us barely existed at that time and it's showing its age. And while I respect those who tell me with great fervency that they heard Daddy Kool play there. That's marvellous. And they heard Midnight Oil play there. And they heard Nirvana play there. Yeah, respect. Total respect. They heard those things. I would like a place where the next big world changing music band comes here. It can't just be a track record of past dreams, it has to be a place of future dreams. So what we're going to do tonight is we're going to outline to you how those dreams intersect with what you've told us and the design brief. It connects very closely with our work to refresh ANU by 2020, which will become ANU by 2025. And in particular the work we've been doing on the education plan ANU 2025. To give you a taster of that education plan, we're going to embark on new approaches to admissions. But we've also said the time is right to maximise our approaches to teaching that are focused on interaction between staff and students. Yes, we did put thermal sensors in the lecture theatres to track attendance. And surprise, surprise, we've discovered that seminars and tutorials are what people really want. We want to be able to create spaces where students and not just staff, but students can make MOOCs. That we can have maker spaces that cross over between physical creation but digital creation as well. We're honoured to be able to disseminate ideas, have public events in appropriate spaces. Get our ideas out to the world, bring Canberra in. But importantly also bring more of our community home. 1,500 students missed out on a bed, we need to do something about that. Staff and PhD students struggle to get accommodation in this university because we don't have enough to offer. It's time to bring our community home. And we hope tonight that you'll be able to see elements of us bringing the community back in the design brief. In terms of the instructions that we gave to the designers, I'm just going to display them. That's my second slide. We gave the team this brief. And what we're going to hear tonight is their response to the brief. And it's an opportunity for you after the discussion, we'll have question and answer. And then you'll be able to see some of the images outside and to engage further in consultation. Importantly, this is about capturing and making sure we've got your views right because we want to go to University Council confident that we've listened to you, that we've thought about this, and that we're presenting the best possible case. It has not been approved, it's a dream. We're going to need your help to make sure that the dream gets realised. And with that, I'm now going to hand over to Phil, who's the project manager who's going to walk us through realising the dream in the brief. Thank you, Phil. One of the things I reflected on to start with was what a fantastic project to be involved in is this. The opportunity to contribute to such a significant change in an organisation's culture doesn't come along very often, let me tell you, and it's really a great honour. The project to date has really been, as Marnie said, about establishing those needs. And then once we've established those, how could we arrange them to deliver an amazing place? In a nutshell, that's our mission. And underlying that journey to date, and we'll continue to underlie whatever direction it takes in the future, is a very deep and authentic engagement process with the university. I am a fundamental believer in engagement in my whole project work. That is a tenet that we take with us, and you can do no better research for whatever it is that you're trying to devise. So, many of you have given to that process and will continue to, and it's beyond your day job, and we really thank you for doing so. Andrew touched on just how many people have been involved in the engagement process to date. We have got something like 23,500 comments from you all. Obviously, that's a lot of material, but we've been able to distill it to some very distinctive threads that came up again and again. And we're quite remarkable actually in terms of that consistency, swimming pool being the number one. And so we use some of our customer focus there to convince the executive that that really should have a business case developed for it and put it firmly on the agenda. And that's the case at the moment. Let's hear a little bit from some of the community who have been a part of this, and they're very articulate people, let me say. So, let's see the video. Union Court. That's a tricky question. Where I'm from, we'd say that it lacks vibe. I would describe it as being fairly dated. It's not a very exciting place. I would describe Union Court as a place that is a bit depressing. There's not much happening, and it's just uninspiring. I think it's very grey. It's quite barren, and it's probably a little bit too student-oriented for me to want to spend much time there. It doesn't feel like a place that staff would necessarily hang out. Union Court is dull, but still central and full of potential at the same time irrelevant to a lot of people. What would I change about Union Court? What would I keep? When I walk through Union Court at the moment, everyone seems to be on a rush to lecture or back to their office or to get lunch. If I could see in the future a Union Court where people are sort of happy to sit and relax and stop and chat, that would be a lot better than it is currently. A place for people to come and sit and be and interact, run into people that you know, lecturers, academics, friends, staff. Make it a place where people actually want to be instead of coming in doing what you need to do and getting out. What we're so lucky to have in Canberra is that we're half bush, half city. We don't have that in any other cities in Australia. So I think if Union Court could encapsulate that a bit better, that would be fantastic. If you could enjoy nature and lie on the grass and, you know, kind of soak in the sun, or you can sit in a cafe, you know, a couple of steps away and get some work done and feel like you're in a city, then we'd have the best of both worlds. I'd like to have a place where I can come hang out with friends, have lunch, or if I'd like to just have a bit of a long time and read a book. What I would change about Union Court is make it a place that has more options for students, better places to eat, more choices for coffee, better places to sit. I'd like to see some place that's a bit more interesting, a bit more colourful and dynamic. I live on campus and so for me, having a place that's open late at night and also on weekends is quite important. Somewhere to spend time that is on campus, that isn't somewhere away. You're not always trying to get off campus to see something exciting. So if we can improve Union Court to make it somewhere that we want to come between lectures and to come at lunchtime, then that's something that most universities don't have and that we need to really embrace at the ANU. I think a really great place is quite social and there's always great people watching. Definitely the atmosphere. It's got to be a place that makes you want to jump in and be a part of the action or just sit back and enjoy it. A great place should have interesting elements, sort of the element of surprise. You never know what's lurking around any corner, places for performances and just places to hang out and have fun. It needs to be some character and a touch of quickness. Something interesting every direction that you look. If you can turn around, you see something that you might not have seen before. All of your senses are engaged. It's somewhere that's open late at night. Unfortunately for the rest of society, students are nocturnal beings and we need something that excites us when everyone else is going to bed. One of the great places that I can think of at the moment, there's a park in the middle of town that has bars surrounding it but in the middle there's kids running around and there's people sunbaking. That's what would make a really great place. Somewhere you can sit, get some work done, meet people. Everyone's happy. It's a great place to chill out and hang around and not feel lonely. Somewhere where there's always something going on, be it day and night, all through the week and throughout the year where you feel comfortable to go with your family and your friends or meet new people even. Variety. It's all the places you can eat, especially as a student you want places you can eat that are great but cheap as well. And coffee, coffee. You've got to have great coffee and you've got to have lots of choices for it. I think it's important to create a great place at Union Court to give the University a real heart and to make it an inspiring place and also somewhere that makes me want to do my best work for the University. It's so important that we create a great place here at the ANU that showcases what we can produce at the University. Visitors at the moment who come from Canberra or from elsewhere in Australia or from across the world and see in Union Court just how good we are at the ANU and just what we can produce. Every University needs a heart. Every University needs a place where students can come and relax after their classes, between classes and just making sure that the University is in a place where you come and go between your lectures but somewhere that you want to come and enjoy it because you enjoy being here. I think that in itself is almost a brief, that little video and if you wrapped it around the needs you indeed do have one. But let's just talk a little bit about some of the themes that did come from your work. There obviously is a missing ingredient which is called urbanity. There is a marvellous garden campus but we've just heard just how much of the urbanity which is sought generally is missing. Owning the evenings was seen as one of the big themes that really was missing that as soon as the sun goes down it really is not a very inviting place. It's unsafe and that needs to be fixed. The third one was that really understand the ingredients of music, food and ideas and how they can come together in the creation of a great place and how that in itself can become a major bridge to the Canberra community to actually break down some of the perceptions and realities of an elite and aloof community that the ANU actually is seen as by the Canberra community mostly because there's really nothing here that attracts them really. There were about five real strong themes that came through this work that just out of those 23,000 items just resonated so strongly and you'll see some excellent boards out there in the foyer which talk to this stuff and so the first of those was that can you make it authentic? Can you actually make it a place that really says something about ANU and its Canberra setting and the origins of this university? You can take ideas from around the world. You can sample great places but interpret it in the idiom that is Canberra. Whilst the primary feature and objective here is to create excellent and great and outstanding places of learning and research you need to be able to intersperse the sociability and the playfulness so that these things can come together to create a great place. Green and urban can coexist. In the work that you're interpreting you need to actually bring these together. The great garden campus needs to infuse itself into the Union Court. This sense of relaxation and conviviality and vitality needs to be interspersed as well. These things might seem like they're mutually exclusive but we don't think they are and you've told us that you want it that way and I think we've got some exciting propositions around that. This whole idea which Marnie talked about of all of the things that are so fantastic about the ANU and what it has achieved they're tucked away in little showcases in the various colleges or they're actually hidden in the archives of the libraries and there is an intense desire to bring that forward and put it on display in a very powerful way so that not only is your pride in this university actually demonstrated but the community actually sees just what is achieved here. This is a very, very powerful component I believe of the whole brief. So out of all of that a pretty comprehensive development brief and you'll see some of the aspects of that when you look at the boards outside around the depiction of what this could look and feel like using powerful imagery so that when the urban designers were selected and got on board they actually started from a place which had a lot of knowledge and a lot of understanding about what were the expectations of your community and that brings me to Joe Haruda who I'm now going to hand over to. Joe is an urban designer from Vancouver he founded a firm called Civitas Urban Designer Planning a long time ago. He's had many, many years of experience around the world. He's a new urbanist by philosophical stance and I think that's just perfect for this project because this is about passion to connect people and places and I have to say that over probably 10 years now Joe has taught me a lot about the difference between urban design and architecture. They are fundamentally different interpretations of place and this is about urban design. Architecture will follow. So Joe. Thank you Phil. I'd like to say in starting to the audience that it really is a genuine honour to be selected to be part of this great collaborative team that we've been working with for the last four months they're all sitting here in the front row and it's been a real pleasure working with this team. We couldn't have done it without them. The boldness of this initiative for re-envisioning University Avenue will forever change the experience of this campus and reinforce the stature of the university as one of the great universities of the world. Phil, you asked me how we started to approach this task of re-envisioning the campus. So we started by looking at the context of the village study area within the surrounding campus in the city looking at what some of the forces are outside of the campus that could influence this also in the future and also understanding the Burley-Griffin plan with its original vision for University Avenue. We noted that the avenue had always been intended by Griffin as a place of greater density, height and urban activity. He talked about the great boulevards and how they would become active places in the city and he also identified that there would be a major public building in the location of today's Union Court at the heart of that campus core. At the eastern and western ends of the avenue within CSIRO and Civic are concentrations of employment and living which will continue to intensify. These growth centers will continue to contribute to the activation of University Avenue as an urban place over time. We then established the team through a workshop process with the team a set of aspirational principles. The first of these was the central theme of the approach to learning and innovation characterized by a place that is compact and urban, engaging and eclectic, activated and always alive and innovative and enterprising. We also want to create a knowledge-based village around a series of amazing people places or third places and formed by the kinds of experience people have said are missing from the campus today. We need to focus on achieving a more compact urban walkable experience on campus with human scale focusing on public safety with students and staff living in the heart of the village. We all know what University Avenue feels like walking down at this time of night and how are we going to change that feeling. Integrating with nature, pardon me, with learning were places of serenity and concrete balance and engaging landscape architecture in new ways such as New Green Roof on the library. Developing a mobility framework provides greater accessibility into this precinct through the introduction of a new loop road and a small scale grid of streets and laneways that provide multiple options for moving through the precinct. And lastly, creating a destination by arranging all of the village uses in a memorable and evocative way that appeals to the campus and the larger community and adding new elements such as an outdoor amphitheater and a significant tower marker. The urban design interpretation of these principles resulted in this assemblage of buildings, open spaces and this new street grid extending from the Gateway at Childers Street on the left to University Avenue on the center and culminating in Union Court on the right at a new Union Tower and Sullivan's amphitheater on the creek. We began this process by thinking about organizing the brief around a series of campus rooms. Each distinct in character and purpose integrated via a central green spine of University Avenue. These rooms were best characterized as the Campus Gateway, the Living Village, the Village Heart and the Green Eco-Spine along Sullivan's Creek. The most significant or signature elements of this brief were placed at the entry point and surrounding Union Court at its entry portal. A new library location to the north of University Avenue that could accommodate the significant scale and strategic importance of the library was chosen as the primary and iconic social and learning focus. This location capitalizes on its high visibility and presence on the square and along Sullivan's Creek and Sullivan's Garden to the north. Inviting these places to enrich the inner library experience. It's Great Hall and Veranda Roof that you see here projecting over into Union Court invites the Union Court into the heart of the library as an indoor meeting and exhibition space. A new library lane that provides an ideal location to integrate the ANU Film Club, Bar and Event Spaces so that they engage the library Great Hall and spill on to Sullivan's lawn north of the library. As you all know, that's currently a lot of car parking, a car parking lot and it's something that really needs to be placed in the context of the new library being its front yard. The decision to focus the signature functions of student life, teaching and learning spaces, innovation and health and well-being was driven by a need to concentrate the energy and flow in and out of these buildings and between these buildings across Union Court as a kind of crossroads where the ebb and flow in the evening provide an intense level of human interaction. The temporal rhythm of each of these functions is really quite different. The health gym and pool areas, for example, generate peak movement early in the mornings, around noon and in the evening. While the learning and teaching facilities with their scheduled activities create a constant peak and ebb cycle over the hourly periods during the day, the Student Life Center has a constant pedestrian rhythm throughout the day to and from each of the other places around the square. Its location is a key portal to the square at the crossroads of a new North Street and the East West Avenue recognize that students will be coming to it from all directions. In essence, this is all about capturing and engaging the human energy and life in such a way that it creates planned and unexpected face-to-face interactions. We refer to this often as the bump factor, a metric for determining the success of a space for stimulating conversation. This court grouping also provides a significant vertical scale that creates a sense of urbanity and spatial containment for Union Court. As you all know, when you stand in that space today surrounded by one and two-story buildings, it has no sense of a place, where is this place and what is it that defines its edges. The Great Hall and Green Lawn, New Green Lawn, together with cafes and restaurants animating its edges, helps capture people, encourage them to stay longer in the precinct as a kind of social glue or stickiness of the Union Court. The chancellery location was influenced by the opportunity presented to adaptively reuse Chifley itself, transforming the space into a contemporary working environment surrounded by the meadow, the creek, and the oval with a new ceremonial front door directly onto Union Court. Incidentally, that Chifley footprint precisely meets the requirement for the Chancellor's future needs, which is a very convenient coincidence. Thinking about where the residential should be located, the residential addresses, their location was influenced by the opportunity that University Avenue Promenade Green Tree Canopy presented for creating a sense of a new neighborhood focus, a real living neighborhood around an amazing space, ensuring that the buildings framing that street have a human scale and create pedestrian interest and safety. The adjacency of this neighborhood to Union Court further supports the viability for a grocery store, just in the location number four where the University Student Center is located, and increases the customer base for other shops and cafes on the square, adding another element to evening activation. So effectively, we try to arrange the needs of the University in a memorable way that creates an authentic place and reinforces its images as one of the great new places in the world. So Joe, that's an arrangement of buildings and arrangement of needs. So I think the thing that we would love to hear about is what is that experience? How would you describe that experience? That is the most critical question of all, Phil. The human experience, how you're going to experience the spaces walking between these buildings. As you said earlier, urban design is really about thinking about the space we're creating between buildings, what they feel like, what is their scale, what activates them, what makes them interesting places that we would want to come back time and again. So we need to think about this as an imagining journey along the avenue. I think you want to walk through from the gateway through to Sullivan's Creek and talk about this necklace of experiences and places that you would encounter in those spaces between buildings. The architectural images, by the way, that you're going to see in these examples are really not relevant to how we see these spaces. What's important is the sense of how they define these new places. From the beginning, the university has articulated its desire to create a great place at the heart of the campus, a place that is very human in scale with a strong and vibrant public realm that captures the imagination of the campus community. So starting at the gateway, let's imagine a gateway that creates a new arrival experience on children at the intersection of Children's and University Avenue. Using public art, significant lighting elements, landscape treatments, and an activated street theater edge to strengthen the nexus between the campus and the city. It clearly would establish the vibrant and innovative personality of ANU and welcome the community into the university precinct. Emerging from the new gateway, imagine a new green living village space with residential addresses, teaching learning and innovation spaces, a diversity of cultural spaces, pop-up art galleries, small, great coffee houses, a bookstore and small cafes. University Avenue imagined as an important connection between Civic and Solvents Creek, an important movement corridor and a shared way for pedestrians, bicycles, and believe it or not, cars. Buildings will be human in scale, designed with a pedestrian promenade and colonnade to protect pedestrians from the weather, and imagine front doors to the townhouses and apartments with balconies overlooking the street and celebrating light at night for safety. Imagine lawn courts alongside pop-up pavilions hosting campus and community events. The Wednesday markets, art not a park festival. Book launches and student exhibits could all find a home in this great new space. Imagine the secret garden together with the reinvigorated tank provides an intimate landscape of learning and social spaces. Imagine this as a place for outdoor games, evening classes around fire pits and a quiet place for lunch and conversation. Always sunny and protected from winter winds. It was one of the most remarkable spaces that I found on campus that I thought we really needed to kind of respect and reinforce as an experience because of the sense of calmness and strong place that it provides. Now, arriving in Union Court, you'll find the most highly activated part of the campus, a new destination for both the campus and Canberra community to enjoy. Imagine this as an amazing living room for the campus, a place to meet and to linger across roads from all directions and a fitting location for the most iconic library and learning commons. Imagine a grove of trees, an amazing new lawn and sitting edges that will become the new space for socializing with friends and sharing ideas. Sun on the lawn, dappled light under the trees. And imagine at the lawn level, cafes and shops spilling out onto the edges of the court providing animation and vibrancy well into the evening and perhaps on weekends converting the lawn into a weekend market space. This will become one of the most used and photographed spaces at the heart of the campus. This progression from lawn to pond to the softer landscape of Sullivan's Creek. And to the right, you will see the new iconic library with its great hall and veranda. The digital learning commons with its fully automated document retrieval system will become a key focus of this shared intellectual life bringing new knowledge and ideas to the heart of the campus. Looking upward, imagine a rooftop green garden space on top of the library, a place for outdoor study or simply calm respite and contemplation. Imagine a laneway cutting through the library, a lane that flows from the square into a natural and lawned edges of Sullivan's Creek to the north. Imagine new home of the ANU Film Club and major events and performance space along that lane where music and entertainment can spill out onto the lane and onto Sullivan's Green on the north edge of the library. Chiffley Lane is another intense pedestrian experience connecting from the new loop road passing the Health and Well-Being Center with its gym and a proposed swimming pool and leading on to a new river walk along the edge of a Sullivan's pond created at the juncture with a bridge. Imagine a laneway for small casual cafes, a bike shop, the underground jazz club and essential services including a grocer. And across the creek, imagine a new ANU tower would provide an elevated vantage point for viewing the campus, the lake and the capital city's most important buildings in the distance and a visual marker for the entire campus as a legibility device to help you find your way to this important place. In the final part of our walk, we would arrive at the nexus between the square and Sullivan's Creek. Beside the bridge, imagine an amphitheater. Imagine this amphitheater, a significant new performance space for outdoor cinema, bands, student performances. And during the day is a great place to hang out and feel the warmth of the sun and the cooling effect of the water in this wonderful wild landscape of Sullivan's Creek. And imagine on a summer's night, 300 people gathered on the edge of Sullivan's Creek for a performance. So in conclusion, this journey through the gateway to the campus heart at Union Court, from Sullivan's Creek to the library and Great Hall through the laneway surrounding Chifley and back into University Avenue will provide a rich and varied set of places for rituals and memory-making experiences, not only meeting the future needs of the university, but creating an amazing place as well. So now we'll open up to questions from the audience. We have two people with roving mics. I understand at either end. And if you have questions, please put your hands up and we will find a way to get a mic to you. There's one here and there's one here to start with. So we'll start over here first. I'm Ping. I'm a professional staff. Thank you very much for sharing such an exciting and very ambitious plan to redevelop the Union Court. I have worked here for just over 10 years. So I would like to hand around and see this project completed. So thank you very much. My question is about sustainability. It's very important to all of us and just wanting to ask all of you what is your approach towards sustainability? So... Probably I answered that one for now. Part of our team is a very powerful concept called the One Planet Framework. And Caroline Noller, who was going to be here today, but she runs a little company called the Footprint Company. And she got her PhD in how to quantify effectively the consumption of the Earth's resources when it comes to the built environment. And so we're in the process of delineating a target around how many planets that this project would use. Pretty much we think One Planet is easily achievable and that the workshop, the last workshop we had, we set ourselves the target of achieving half a planet. And so what that means is that this project would effectively use half a planet of the world's productive resources to actually affect this project. That's a very ambitious goal, but some universities are now on a building-by-building basis attempting to do that. So there is a very deep and genuine sustainability program that's attached to this project. Can you explain to us what a half a planet rating is? Caroline, we're right here. The concept of Eco Footprint is about how much of... how many global hectares you're using of the Earth's productive resources to actually build a square metre of built form. And so, you know, typically at the moment I think the world's chugging along at about two. And of course in the developed economies it's chugging along at about two and a half. And Australia is right up there, let me tell you. So, you know, it's a way of looking at the whole of life consumption and operational consumption as a consequence of what you build. And so it's a very effective tool to actually measure whole-of-life consumption as opposed to some of the systems that have been used around GreenStar which essentially measure your design effort. And they don't necessarily take into account the effective use of capital to achieve the results. So the One Planet footprint and we will organise more effective dissertations on this with Caroline but the One Planet footprint enables us to effectively look at where the capital goes to get the result and you get effective capital investment decisions out of that as well. Andrew, can I talk about social sustainability as well? Can I just ask first? Well, what I take you to mean from that is that for the whole-of-life operation of what we're talking about you're effectively using one-fifth of the type of resources that are typically used in modern development? A shopping centre is chugging along at about two and a half. Typically at the moment, campuses across the world are at about 1.3. Some of them are better. UC Davis is one of the exemplars that we're looking at. So, yeah, it depends on the intensity of the form, yeah. Great, thanks, Monty. I was just going to say the other side to this is social sustainability. So one of the most common pieces of feedback that we've received over two years and that I get is that students and staff tell me that they're actually lonely. We also combine that with counselling service and medical service that's overwhelmed by people wanting to use its services. So we've put a very big focus on creating a space, putting the student accommodation in there and staff accommodation there to generate activity in the space so that people feel like there's a place they can go and be with other people, creating smaller cafes where people can actually sit down and talk to one another and then, of course, improving our wellbeing provision for both staff and students. I think it's critical, just as critical as the environmental story because we want to make sure that this is a great environmental place but also a great place to work and to live for many, many staff and students. I think, you know, I still like the simplistic, relatively simplistic approach of the triple bottom line which talks about social outcomes. It talks about environmental outcomes and it talks about economic outcomes and I know there have been a million theories involved since then but you know what, if you're really striving between those, I think you're really going to get a good product. Great. Ladies and gentlemen, I should have introduced the fourth member of our panel, who is Christine Allard, who's the director of the annual facilities and services division who's clearly a very key part of any developments on campus so she will be answering some of our questions. We've got a question over here. Jamie Pitock, an academic staff member for only eight years. I think the university should be congratulated, the administration for thinking of such a visionary redevelopment and I thoroughly support that and I think that the concepts we've seen here are very excited. What I don't see in the university's brief to the consultants is anything about transport. Now Joe touched on walkability, touched on a new loop road which sounds like a great idea to me but as a cyclist, I think this university is utterly awful and university court is a place of conflict between pedestrians and cyclists. The university mouths in its plans the ideal of having fewer cars coming to campuses but keeps building car parks in the middle of campuses to suck them in. If you get a bus to Barrie Drive you have to slog through the undergrowth on a muddy track to actually get to your workplace. So I guess my question is will this sustainability vision match by sustainable access to get here? Well, yes is the answer. A big component of the sustainability drive and also the convenience factor is a big focus on cycling. We're doing a lot of work with Christine's group to understand how many people now come on bikes, how many more could. What sort of cyclists are they? Do they require end of trip facilities of a certain type? Where should they be placed effectively? And in addition to that the loop road gives us the opportunity to really build on the municipal transit system. We're talking to the ACT government and if the light rail does go ahead we would love to see a station and node very close really ideally at the end of London Circuit and University Avenue and a very effective reprogramming of the bus situation there. So it's very much part of the proposition. I'd love to reinforce that point about the use of bicycles as well and the importance of transit. I was really impressed by the university's aspiration to increase bike usage in the future to 20% of all the trips to the campus. I think they're less than 5% today. So the campus really does lack any infrastructure to make bikes convenient and safe as a way to get around and when you look at, as you well know the scale of this campus is amazing. It's length from north to south is equivalent to the entire Sydney CBD from circular key down to Central Station very close to Central Station. So bikes will enable you to do that in minutes. However, the issue that arises is one you mentioned of pedestrian conflict and how you design that infrastructure to deal with that conflict is at the heart of how to do it really well to create a really dedicated system for cyclists that doesn't conflict with pedestrian movement and I recently visited UCSB in University of California Santa Barbara which has been able to get its bike usage up to 50%. And when you walk around that campus the bikes are so visible constantly they have, I don't want to refer to them as bike freeways but they're pretty darn close. At a good clip and you'll actually see bike roundabouts on the campus as a way of sorting out movements in different directions. So getting that right is critical. Right in our planning for this particular tiny piece of the campus we've made accommodation for demonstrating how and where these end of trip facilities which are really part of that really important part of that infrastructure. You know what happens when you get there and where do you park your bicycle and how do you protect it from the rain and how all that works has been considered in the detailed conceptual planning for this core. Great, thanks. We have a question up here. I'm Igor Skrebin. I'm from Energy Change Institute. My next question, and I'll go straight to the question is again about sustainability apart from the point of view of energy sustainability. We are talking about new development and modern view on sustainability is for university or for part of university to generate its own energy and that's very important specifically considering that we are part of ACT with ambitious but realistic target to have 90% of our energy from renewable energy resources. So I'm wondering how this opportunity will integrate in itself energy option. Phil? Well, again in conjunction with Christine's group we're about to embark on an overarching energy strategy study for the campus. We started off thinking about these very things for the project itself but it very quickly becomes a question of scale and what's right. And so again that study will look at how to use capital effectively to actually get the result that we're after and the way that the ACT government is trending their trajectory puts that very much on the path of perhaps you buy the energy straight from them and you avoid the complications of industrial plant significant industrial plant and you let them do that so we're about to embark on that study. And in fact, when you look at the big pathways the big pieces where you might actually get to half a planet that energy source is obviously massive in how you do that. Okay, we have a question over here then one down the front. Hi, my name is Edith Peters. I started off as an undergraduate and now part of the professional staff. I was wondering what opportunities have you included citizen scientists and lifelong learning on campus in Union Court and the surrounds? That's my question, that's great. Yeah, absolutely. My assumption is that the learning starts with actually our ANU extension program which we have over now 300 high school students who are studying with ANU doing so twice or three times a week providing them a space where they can do learning through to undergraduate spaces for maker spaces more residential accommodation for PhD students but also we have very active continuing education program in two forms. The first is edX itself which has got a large digital life but we've noticed that wherever we run our MOOCs a lot of people want to get together in particular places to discuss the ideas even when there's 15,000 people enrolled and the second wing of that is actually the centre for community continuing education. So we went out this year and we did market research on the demand for continuing education and ANU in fact has one of the very few continuing education programs still going in an Australian university. A lot of the others have closed down. When we went out we found significant interest and demand and you'll be unsurprised to learn. A lot of people were wanting to study history with us. They want to study the visual arts, they want to study music but there's also a desire for upskilling and change and the two themes that were coming out to us were living in a more digital world learning digital skills but being part of the change and the transformation that sees the sciences as a critical part to understanding our society. So we're seeing really good feedback from students aged 15 right through to up into their 90s saying that they want to learn with us not just online but they want to learn in spaces where they can talk to one another participate and make things, create and so all of that and then additionally the students have told me that they would really like to make MOOCs as well so we thought we will provide a space a MOOC maker space for students and also probably a DJ mash-up studio I'm told it's not a radio station students actually create music I think this is a terrific thing so it's about making visual objects sound objects sciences languages history the whole bit there's huge demand for that in Canberra which absolutely delights me so yes even if we're the only continuing education program left in Australia we are going to be absolutely sensational not just by being the only one but by being a great one Great, thanks Marnie we have a question down the front David Williams I'm with the Humanities Research and I'm formerly director of the School of Art one of the great virtues of the ANU campus is the wonderful sculpture program and the visual art program Drill Hall Gallery, School of Art Gallery and so on my question is in this grand idea this is wonderful what scope is there for site-specific commissioned sculpture that could be integrated into the development? We went through the cost plan this week and there is a significant amount of money in there for that very program so you know at the end of the day one of Joe's colleagues who's part of the urban design team from Oculus they'll be developing that ground plane and that public realm and those strategies and there will definitely be a continuation and extension of the fantastic public art program But varieties of art David so sculptural definitely we also wanted to create more pop-up spaces for temporary exhibitions as well and importantly the Oculus team some of you will know them they're the creators of New Acton so there's been a really deliberate work to integrate art into the space and make it a vital part of the experience You know I said integrated the memory will be developed because it doesn't pop up There's several layers of that and one of the things that we will get to if this proceeds is in the design development phase to have a very rich contextual interpretation that we will be looking to very high quality interpretations of that material in the built form as well Sorry, starter David There's actually some examples you'll see this evening where we actually asked some students from the School of Art to begin to think about visualising the space so there's actually some examples out there where they've helped us to think about Yeah, yeah, think about a new way Oh, some of those spaces the thing about those lanes and the 50 to 80 metre blocks every corner, every change of grade is a little opportunity for another piece of creativity and we see those schools being absolutely important and actually how those things come to life Just to again reinforce that point we saw the entry gateway it's a very difficult as an opportunity for art it's a really difficult space to deal with we don't control the law court building we don't control the street theatre but we can use we thought you can really use art we talked about glass art boxes the elements of that space creating a sequence of either sculpture or art and continuing that theme one of the things we've talked about is continuing that theme all the way along the avenue that could be part of an experience of a sculpture walk or an art walk that it's one of the things that could really express the importance of art and music in the campus and music, music is as important when I looked at the plan of the music school and saw the jazz practice room I thought would I ever love to hear the jazz that jazz class down in Fifthly Lane with their own little night club playing jazz every night instead of being in that room down there let them set up a business and operate a jazz club music and art and they're right at the front door of the campus connecting art and music into that university avenue as a broad idea I think is some real power that could influence this plan at another level Great, we have a question at the front from Sarah then one up here and then there's two more in the middle for which we'll need microphones, Sarah So I'm Sarah Pearson, the CEO of the Canberra Innovation Network I want to say congratulations, it looks like a fantastic plan and I think that I get really excited about is it looks like a place for what I think of as collisions so plenty of collisions between the arts, the sciences between where you live, where you work, where you learn and I'm particularly excited to see the innovation building quite at the centre of that so I have a question about that though as you walk down the avenues you see some of those pictures I can get a feel for all the collision places and space in the centre but my question is how have you got ideas about how to make sure that people don't just scurry off into their buildings and shut the door and don't see it I particularly feel really strongly about the innovation building it's a culture change that needs to happen at ANU so how do you get what's inside that building to help change the culture to make it more innovative across the whole ecosystem and the second question is if I think about Kendall Square at MIT there's an innovation square there there's lots of entrepreneurs and startups which is attracting large companies to come and live there and have their offices there is there room for expansion my vision is that in 20, 30 years time there's a lot of multinationals who actually want to come and live here too so is there going to be that expansion opportunity so there's a question here about collisions which I guess Joe is best Joe's job and the innovation one perhaps Marnie Joe the other person is really passionate about this innovative part I don't see him here he's disappeared Sam where are you very eloquently to that he's the man who had left to talk to this and he really influenced our thinking on how that could play out and where it should play out in the plan and we didn't really talk about that about where that might be located and we saw that as having a very significant presence on the avenue at that nexus between the avenue and the plaza at the innovation center and its visibility and accessibility was really important important message to really engage those elements and make them part of a very visible part of the experience and the example you gave was there there's some really wonderful examples of how that can play out in these new spaces that we're creating so we really need to develop that that thinking with people like Sam's passion to help you know give materiality to that thinking I could say Sarah one of the things you'll notice is what is it located next to you'll see that it's right next to learning and teaching spaces so one of the challenges we put to the team was could you confuse us about whether we're an accelerator or in a classroom we wanted some of that to bleed out into because when we visited accelerators they're often furnished in ways that look like classrooms so we wanted to deliberately blur the boundary between those two and place them next to one another to really reinforce the notion of an innovation ecosystem that's actually taking in undergraduates as well as the Canberra community so we wanted to make a gesture there a very powerful one we also wanted to have maker spaces in there as well then on the other side of it right next to the public event space now I've got a lot of feedback from the colleges saying that they're often renting venues off campus where they can actually have meetings with industry and talk to people outside of ANU and they aren't doing that on the ANU campus a lot of the time because the spaces aren't right so we've scoped it and we've placed ANUE right in the middle of the teaching but also that outreach activity so that people will be able to have meetings go into ANUE but then I can see the teaching that's going on in the space as well because you're right, putting it there is a great challenge to the university to say we are fundamentally an innovative organisation but sometimes our innovation travels down one path and it can travel down multiple paths and so we've been, I think, a bit provocative putting it there and I absolutely stand by it I think it's the right thing for this university to do to encourage that shift Great, so we have a question at the back with a microphone Brett Yates I graduated in 1971 but I regularly come back to the ANU partly because I'm on the committee of the ANU film group but I come to talks at the Centre for European Studies last year you had a number of diplomats that were talking there and you get a good audience of non-student, non-academics of that sort of thing so I'm exploring how important is it people from the Canberra community here so you're succeeding with people there I went to a conversation and book launch with Ross Gittens recently that was in the economics area you do a lot of book launches with the Canberra Times and some of those are absolutely packed so you're succeeding in getting a lot of people in here the film group, for example, gets 300 people and more to some of the screenings but they're all disparate sort of things so people come in to do that and then they go so I might meet somebody and say let's talk about this and we end up going to Bratton or Dixon so I can see exactly what the need is for what you're doing here so if people meet and they can just go somewhere really close and have those sort of facilities where they can talk and meet and discuss everything so is that the sort of do you want a lot of non-ANU people coming in and how, is that what we're trying to do is to keep them here for more we keep talking about the 500 to 1000 people that are on the campus any particular night of the week that are attending events and yet basically they do nothing for that heart of the campus so there is a major component of this is about aggregation and then triangulation is what I call it which is having attended a primary event what are the other things that are necessary to make that experience holistic that's the cafes, perhaps the music, the bar etc so there is a big piece of that plan that is about aggregation of facilities and bringing the film club right into the heart multi multi-use facilities that can be used for those sorts of events and then actually programming the cafes and the food so that they support that and each supports the other and one of the primary goals here is to actually really effectively engage with the with the Canberra community and how do you do that you have to actually program this stuff so that it's actually relevant to them and they see it as another place another third place that they can go that Braden and how the corporate architects up there are doing is a favor because you know every cute little thing they knock down up there and they stick another corporate building on it gives us the opportunity to create this in a genuine way that actually becomes another one of the villages around Canberra and extending the life of the campus so this part of the campus beyond the 40 week academic calendar is the secret of doing that and I'd like just to make a comment about we were really fascinated by looking at how Griffin had imagined the university and its relationship to the city that the University Avenue was actually the city coming into the campus as a living place people would live there and that was the edge of campus somehow over time the campus has spread across and gulfed that avenue and taken away the part of the city and the thought that people can now live there they're going to be university staff and students but it's going to be a real living place and those are the people of the city and we really need to welcome in the community because it was intended as part of the community that the University Avenue was really really was the village heart the library was intended to sit on the avenue and so that integration of community and campus is I think a vital part of the thinking of this plan I mean when things finish tonight where are you going to go for dinner right the number of times I've been to evening functions on campus with my wife let's walk to civic or chill district wouldn't it be great to have something here we had a question just here hello my name is Michael I am an undergraduate student at the ANU I'm Michael I'm an undergraduate student at the ANU this redevelopment presents a lot of opportunities for some very integral organizations on campus some of which are currently located in union court to have dedicated custom design spaces specifically the learning communities the departments especially disabilities the XSA and the ANUSA's Brian Kenyon student space I'm wondering if you've consulted any of these organizations and to what extent you plan to consult these organizations in the future and whether you're planning to provide dedicated spaces yeah thanks Michael absolutely so ANUSA and PASA in fact you probably will have seen in the depths of winter the union court team out in the middle of union court with the balloons asking students to participate in participating online and that's on top of a year and a half of asking students one of the issues we've got right now is that student services is distributed over 11 sites on campus and ironically student central is actually not on campus it's actually off campus so it's not central so we actually have a major problem in that students who are wishing to access services are having to wander all over the campus and we've had a frustrating time getting PASA relocated back into union court after some delay and with clubs and societies we're aware really don't have spaces to hang out to present their activities so we've suggested having a clubs and societies house in union court we will of course accommodate the the Brian Kenan room PASA and ANUSA absolutely but all of those ancillary student services as well to make sure that students are not wandering here there and everywhere to get the help and support that they need this is it's critical that if you're building for your community that your community knows where things are and they can access that support so yes students have been consulted but we're consulting and we continue to so if people feel strongly about things of course they get in touch with me and I'm really proud to say the students have actually shown great levels of leadership in giving us feedback and letting us know what they would like to see starting with Kim on that film tonight who you know said what would you keep what would you what would you get rid of and I think that's been great Thanks we have a question here Yes my name is Chris Ronan I'm a community coordinator at Bruce Hall and an undergraduate student I have a question about the medium term of this project so for example the ANU prides itself on their student experience and how important that is and during the process of this development there's a potential that the whole life of some of the students life on campus is going to be what's being developed and all the other provisions are in there to make sure that its experience is still really really good while this process is going on That's a great question I wouldn't mind answering that one That's a really important question I'm very conscious of that that I could be asking a 15 year old to deal with a building site so one of the key considerations here is to say if we're going to do this you can't allow this development to kind of bleed out over time you can't have a situation where 15 year olds are generally a construction site over an extended period of time so keeping it focused in a shorter period is really important minimising the disruption and having places to decant people is really important but also I think the kind of pop up methodology has been really interesting for us saying if things are taken away we do need to be able to provide services and we will do so through pop up methodology so one of the great things in this project for me has been working with Village Well mainways in Melbourne about how it is we can keep spaces activated understand what people want and make sure that students are not skirting around the edges of chain link fences for three years and start the same thing too so absolutely it's a critical part of the development of this if it were to go ahead would say that's absolutely on the money because I don't want a generation telling me that they were the ones that lived through the big hole in the ground and how miserable it was Did you want to just to say that very very intensive planning and energy has to go into that and the pop up village which Marnie talked about we see as a very particular piece of that work that we want to bring some really good minds to including the Village Well guys to really make it an experience that's actually positive in its own right there's no getting away from the fact that it will be sitting alongside some kind of construction site short can we make that period and how alternative can that experience be in a positive way Yeah I mean I can say from the perspective of the people in the university senior management that that we want a project that's quick because we don't want the whole student life cycle for one cohort of students to be blighted by this so we will ensure that anything that comes forward for approval really achieves that that's critical If you have a question you've got a microphone, great Michael Blacksell, physics and engineering one suggestion first of all before I ask my questions and it was related to the sculptures that you were talking about on University Avenue I was hoping that you'd also make them more dynamic sculptures because we've got really good engineers at this university who could help make active things we're talking about bringing public in some public like looking at static sculptures others look like, especially young kids like looking at dynamic things things that go boom and I really like the idea about integrating the music in with those sculptures also so I'll get to my questions now first thing is about the philosophy of the tower it's probably the only thing in this whole thing that is really stuck out to me and going not really keen on that I was hoping that maybe light shows on the side of it to keep that dynamic influence going and my second question and I'm sorry I'm asking too fellow's oval looks like it was an oval shape in the plan I would like to know what your ideas about that is and it also looked like in the meadows section you didn't talk about that when you had the 2D image it looked like there was a couple of playing fields there could you expand on that and if you're trying to bring community in because sporting is part of the 5 point thing that we're talking about have you ever considered bringing community in to a professional sporting organisation supported on the ANU campus like UC attempted to do with Brumbies you've asked a lot of questions you've risked by asking so many that our attention span might not be long enough to cope with them so Joe go for the tower first I'd love to take on the question about the ANU tower at the end of the Boulevard Avenue I keep thinking of what Griffin called it when you look around the city this is a capital city and one of the things that's really remarkable about its commemoration is seeing these important places in the city as really strong visual markers the at the end of the extension of of the avenue to terminate at this tower visually we think is a way to really mark this university as an important place in the capital city structure it is a national university and it's a very important place in this city and it doesn't have it could be one of those places that could be very subtly seen on the skyline of the city and could contribute to it without competing with anything but also an experience that people talk about how different it's really amazing when you go around the hills around the campus and look down on the city how beautiful that piece of landscape is with the lake flowing through it and the markers that are around the edges of it and the park-like quality to see that place from above is really something quite beautiful and a place to get a new view of the city that you live in and what the parts you can see them all coming together so we thought the marker was a really good way to celebrate that and make it commemorate that structure of monuments in the city that Griffin had in his mind the second question was why don't you go for the sport questionnaire that goes with the student amenities fee and we talk about things that money is spent on and sport divides this community as you can imagine the important thing about Canberra is that there is no notion given feedback to the team there is no notion of number one oval because there's no single sport that dominates the Canberra scene more than any other city, you've got Aussie rules you've got soccer, you've got rugby there's a whole range of sports one of the things that we wanted to really reflect was obviously a lot of adverse student feedback about fellows oval it has a very unpleasant reputation in this university so we're addressing that through good lighting which we've already done but to generate more activity in that space so that people are able to use it after hours and feel comfortable so we've put change rooms in there in our amenity you'll notice on the edge we'd also put the basketball courts as well the last thing we want is basketball courts right next to where people are living basketball on the edge I've been one of the ones that they've been trying I'm not sure about this gymnasium as well I'm conscious that there are all the large sports we talk about but at the moment we have students who are playing badminton on the road because there aren't enough badminton courts in the sports gymnasium so there's a lot of growth in particular sports and we haven't perhaps kept pace with those activities we've also I think it's been very important to give the team feedback to make sure that sports not just seen as a team sport opportunity but a great health and well-being opportunity so the last thing we did visit a space at RMIT an outdoor sports space and I very critically noticed that it was all guys playing sport outside that I wanted to create outdoor yoga spaces and spaces where women could feel comfortable actually in engaging in exercise as well as to whether we'd sponsor a team look it's a really important question I think that the best answer would be to say a team that would represent the ethos of this university and I suspect it probably wouldn't be a highly paid professional sporting team because a lot of people the great thing about ANU sport is that the residential competitions a lot of our teams the soccer team for instance they are members of the community who come in and play for fun but they do really really well and I love the fact that it's a great place where the wider community connects with ANU in a really egalitarian way and I suspect that if we were to engage in a conversation about sporting teams people would instruct me to think about egalitarianism community participation and a broad range of ages participating so if I would have a sport team at the moment we have three year olds training up in the gymnasium on the weekend the soccer joe is I'd love to see swim schools here I'd like to see community football people playing all the codes out there and the meadows yes we did size it up but honestly the sport that we had in my mind I told them to think about was quidditch because we have a really good quidditch team and we as a part of this project I asked them to research the size of a quidditch field for the international competition to make sure that we could produce a proper field there you go don't you love universities so many ideas and I think the meadow is is intact it's not been touched and it's the home of quidditch and it will stay there what appealed to us also was the thought that if some of those sporting events that now happen in the north oval and driving by there last weekend seeing what was going on there and the activity if you can imagine that happening right at the front door of chifley and how those events those sporting events could really help to activate union court before and after events they're really going to help to energize and activate those restaurants and cafes and the pub and all that lane activity I mean it's a great place to think of sport connections with the with the court and with the avenue it's I'm really glad you brought that up it's really one of the great initiatives of this plan is to make that more important for sports okay we'll move to the next question is there a microphone just in the front here we go to graduate student just in relation to your answer to Michael's question you didn't actually say that you whether or not you had actually converse with the community spaces on campus and the groups who run them and I think that it's definitely necessary to given their high levels of interaction with much of the community on campus yep so I'm happy to say that yes we have there's over 100 societies there are the collectives as well as part of a new say yes there's been very active engagement some have been more responsive than others I have to say but also the learning communities we want to bring them into union court as well and give them a home so yes we have it hasn't been the case that always people have answered our request to get in touch because they have other things going on the lives but we certainly have reached out across the broad collectives across the clubs on the graduate level to make sure that we understand the range of activity that's going on and we build spaces that are appropriate for activity we've also included of course Griffin Hall in there because Griffin's got it's little outpost there we want to make sure that the virtual hall is reflected appropriately in the space so yes we have we have one down here hi how you going my name is Jody I manage the co-op bookshop on campus my question is from a retailer is one of you what's the plan for the current retailers on campus well there's a long way to go yet in terms of evolving the precise configurations and who's who our intention will be to preserve as much of those as we can but in saying that we're looking for a contemporizing of the types of food and services that are offered we can't go on the way it is in fundamental terms and so we'll be working with the university to come up with what we'd call a retail plan or food and beverages and services plan that actually gives the university community the best that it expects and there's some hard work to do on that yet thanks just here hi my name's Tom and I'm an undergraduate student so my question kind of related to I suppose engaging with non-residential students so you've outlined some great plans to build residences for staff and students but given more than 50% of undergraduate of campus and I suppose the learning spaces have I guess been rejigged what are your plans to engage non-residential students and I suppose could you elaborate on the new teaching and learning spaces well another member of our team Sam Shepard is really passionate about how those non- residential students how their day goes and the sense of belonging that they might have and the sense of home and a place that they can call their own so we're working as part of that whole student life suite of experiences to see how we can actually devise effectively such a place so that's early it's early days when it comes to that but definitely he's not letting us off the hook in terms of how that experience might work given the proportions irrespective of the development Richard's got as part of his student experience plan really focusing in on making sure that the best experiences are available to both groups of students who are aware of the differences there one of the proposals we've got in the new education plan is that we really harness the energy of the co-curriculum far more on the campus we focus a lot on the formal curriculum the degrees the courses but there's an awful lot more we could be doing in the non-formally accredited spaces club societies leadership opportunities to participate whether you live on campus or you don't it's a very lively and organic place it's wonderful and I think that actually doing a shaping that a little bit more so that everybody gets the chance to participate whether they live on campus or they don't so it's a big consideration in terms of the learning spaces this year's been a great year of learning for us we've put those thermal sensors into the lecture theatres to track how people are using our spaces it's no surprise that the tutorials and the seminar rooms are used by the students but the lecture theatres increasingly are not but we have great demand for lecture theatres for public events it's interesting that it's spaces like this that are probably more useful for public events than they are for teaching there's no tablets in here anyway as far as we can see the feedback on the learning spaces is flat floor spaces simple things like wheels on the tables so people can move the furniture around lots of power points wireless right yes that would be a dream wouldn't it we've got really and we've surveyed both staff and students about that to ask them do you have a dream classroom having it what should it have my feeling is a lot of the feedback is flat floor get the basics right get the wireless working get it with natural air flow please don't you know climate control it so that we don't feel like we're actually in connection with outside lots of feedback saying can we have windows so people can see the energy and the activity and the learning and teaching in the university we don't want to hide away the good stuff so there's a couple of classrooms on campus we don't have that ilk but there's not enough of them and so just as we're going to focus the retail we're going to try and focus more of the learning and teaching into this space as well so that even if you're not living in a college we want you to feel like you're absolutely part of the energy and the activity on this campus and that you're going to get recognised whether you're doing something as part of a a degree or part of just a club of society ladies and gentlemen I think the time has come we've got one more hand that's just gone up so we'll take that question but that'll be our last one My name's Andrew Shuler it's a very simple question how's this massive and rather exciting project going to be funded the inevitable Andrew it's a great question so it is a proposal it is going to council so what we've tried to do is we've identified parts of the development that we think that could be externally funded because what we don't want to do and I don't want this to sound horrible, what we don't want to do is to divert the university's resources away from building a lot of our new faculty buildings so we've agreed to build a new research school of social sciences, computer science, mathematics we need to engage in the rejuvenation of our research and academic spaces they need a lot of work so wherever we're able to we will be looking to see if we can get external investment but university controlled spaces but big ticket items like the library this is a responsibility that falls to us and we have to explore how to do this it's a core part of the development and that's obviously something that we'll be working through but what we're going to try and do is to make sure that we can do this but not slow down or jeopardize the program that we've now got going of building new academic buildings to make sure that the rest of the campus doesn't lag behind and we don't have good facilities thank you Marnie I think we've come to the end of our lot of time so thank you for being a great audience you've really asked a lot of great questions and the feedback that we're hearing through the questions will continue to be absorbed really wonderful input Christine hasn't had the chance to answer any questions about parking so Christine is delighted so thanks Andrew was there anything you wanted to say I was just going to thank you all for not raising transport yes but not parking I've only been at the university for just over two years and I see this as probably I see it as the most transformational project that the university has and probably will undertake since nearly 70 years ago when the dream was first dreamt one of the things that I find really exciting about this is what I call creating the heritage of the future a lot of people have talked about demolishing buildings and what are we going to do with the artwork and what are we going to do with this and that and all those things this is about understanding and capturing the social heritage of the university and the union court area but I see it as really a huge opportunity for us to create the heritage of the future so I think it's a fantastic step forward Thanks Christine and for me I was excited when I first heard of this project tonight makes me more excited I think the creativity that's being brought by our colleagues is exceptional and it's a journey that I think we all look forward to so thank you for your participation this evening and we look forward to continuing to talk to you your feedback ongoing is very welcome so we'll draw proceedings to a close formally now but I'm sure the conversations will continue and encourage you to do that so thank you for being a great audience, good night