Traditional Land Owners: Turrbal and Jagera People 

This flagship project for UQ incorporates a range of interconnected spaces with overlapping boundaries between learning, research and industry via a design encouraging a sense of shared discovery and collaboration. The building positions UQ into the future while also playing homage to its past, with a unique energy-efficient glass facade clad in a distinctive transparent veil derived conceptually from the chemical engineering process of turning sandstone into glass – with colours sampled directly from the nearby Great Court.

Its compact vertical urban form provides informal learning spaces for students and staff, reclaiming half of the site for landscape spaces. These landscapes are connected to formal and informal student learning spaces visible from the campus via open interconnected ‘pod’ balconies.

A central atrium space, derived from the form of the Great Court, links together the learning/research activities of the School of Chemical Engineering into a singular and highly connected collaborative environment.