Deakin Law School Building | Woods Bagot

To unify the university’s fractured Burwood Campus in Melbourne, Woods Bagot’s Deakin Law School Building presents a sculptural and coiled learning environment. The structure serves as a beacon and gateway to the Elgar Road Precinct, providing a point of orientation, wayfinding, and an enhanced campus experience. The compelling geometry of the Deakin Law School Building came from the creative blend of learning areas housed within. Each room addresses a different new teaching style, thus replacing the traditional lecture theatre.

© Peter Bennetts

Deakin Law School Building’s Design Concept

The structure has five layers of flexible, media-rich learning areas that span the formal-informal continuum, allowing students to move fluidly between modes of learning. Technology bars, group pods, and individual spaces encourage interaction, cooperation, and private study.

© Peter Bennetts

Two levels are exclusively dedicated to student assistance and health and wellness services, including locations on campus designated for student retreats and reflection. The Wellness Garden, which sits between the building and Gardeners Brook Reserve, is filled with native plants, stones, a deconstructed brook, and tiered seating. The winter garden on level five, on the other hand, offers an area high above the trees, complete with a vertical plant wall and floor-to-ceiling glass louvers. Three bigger experimental Premier Learning Spaces disrupt traditional learning typologies: a large, tiered presentation area is designed to function as a collaborative space when not in presentation mode; large group working spaces can function as informal learning spaces when not timetabled.

© Peter Bennetts

The Premier Learning Space, set off from the main rectilinear teaching wing and articulated as curved organic extrusions, is covered in zinc and articulated as curved organic extrusions. Each is a reaction to the undulating geography of the site, pushing students energetically across the area and spiraling upward to frame a distinct view of the precinct. The law school site is located on the northwest edge of the university’s Burwood Campus, which is separated from the rest of the campus by a river.

© Peter Bennetts

During the Law Building’s construction, a new link bridge was built to offer a connection back to the Elgar Road Precinct. With an awareness of the intended bridge design, Woods Bagot saw this constraint as an opportunity for the building to serve as a campus mediator, an organizational framework for the public space, and an extension of the campus infrastructure. The dramatic form and gleaming materiality of the building function as a sort of wayfinding, ushering students across the link bridge and establishing a campus traversability that did not previously exist.

© Peter Bennetts

Woods Bagot has developed a learning landmark that represents the university’s dedication to developing pedagogies as the first significant general-purpose learning and teaching space added to the campus in a decade. The building’s significance extends well beyond its boundaries as a campus catalyst and arresting entrance point within the university’s Elgar Road Precinct.

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