Campus Common
The Campus Common is a temporary event and retail space located along the central north-south spine of Macquarie University.
Utilising shipping containers and tensile fabric to provide a lightweight and robust design, the architecture is based on an assemblage of elemental objects which define interlocking and overlapping social spaces that provide varying levels of intimacy and connection to the surrounding landscape.
The site is arranged as a small series of market scale pavilions, a generous external planted courtyard and a hall cable of multiple modes of operation. These spaces are linked through varying apertures and thresholds providing visual and atmospheric cues to encourage exploration and use. The tensile fabric roof elements affords a subtlety to daylighting which imbues the space with a softness. In the evening, the fabric canopies take on a glowing beacon-like quality through the careful integration of lighting providing a welcoming backdrop to the social heart of the campus while linking the Campus Common to the wider university.
In actively developing a place making response the design employs environmental atmospheric cues to situate itself while simultaneously using its mass and transitionary scales to develop a sense of gravity and longevity seldom afforded in temporary architecture.
