The University Campus

An Englishman considers the Flinders site

(Pommie Bastard checks out Uni campus)

A view from Legal Studies
by Frank Sharman

When the University was founded it was given a site about 8 kms south of Adelaide City Centre, on the main road leading south from the city. This site was mainly on the steep slopes where the Adelaide Hills descend to the coastal plain and to the sea about 3 kms away. The slopes were intersected by a few dry valleys. The site, which had once been cleared to make farm land, was barren, bereft of all but a few trees.

The development of these bare slopes has been something of a success story, attributable in no small measure to the fact that the original University Architect, G.J.Harrison, remained the architect until 1995. That meant that one design concept could be seen through from start to establishment.

Looking from the Law and Commerce Building, across the campus to the sea

Sturt, the FMC and the main academic area can be seen as separate areas of building development within the site. This short account is about the main academic area, where the writer is based in the Legal Studies unit; Sturt and FMC can, no doubt, give their own accounts of their own areas.

Looking from the south ridge across to Law and Commerce

The masterstroke of the plan for this area was to select one of the dry valleys and the horseshoe of land around it, to dam the valley and provide a lake and to put the main buildings along the ridges which now surrounded the lake. The first buildings, which contain not only the original teaching rooms but also the student union buildings, a parade of shops, a bank and a post office, were built at the bottom of the slope. As the university expanded new buildings were erected along the ridges on each side of the lake. It is perhaps typical of the '60s, when C.P.Snow was moved to write about "the two cultures", that the science buildings climbed up the south side and the arts buildings climbed up the north side. Suitably, as the boundaries between disciplines break down, so the buildings have reached the tops of their respective sides and future buildings will cross the top of the valley to complete an architectural and academic convergence

Looking across the lake to the Library and the Plaza

The individual buildings, the great majority of which were designed by outside architects, are not, in themselves particularly distinguished but are good enough examples of the architecture of their times. The buildings on the arts side are all modern in style but they all have, to a more or less pronounced extent, covered walkways around the interiors of their courtyards. The courtyard design itself refers to centuries old traditions of western European and Islamic university design and the covered walkways echo the learned monastic cloisters. But they also make a clear reference to the Australian architectural tradition of the veranda and serve the purpose of providing cooler and shady pathways. These courtyards are linked one to the other all the way up the hill.

The Biology building on the south ridge

But what makes these courtyards is their planting. Mostly the planting is dense and mostly the plants and trees are exotics - exotic in South Australia at least. But plenty of room is left for sitting areas and grassed areas. The result is a strong sense of enclosure with a constant bustle of people moving through the areas.

Looking across the lake and up to Law and Commerce

Outside the horseshoe of buildings everything is very different. The once bare hills have been very liberally planted, almost exclusively with Australian native species. Although the landscaping of some of the plentiful car parks has not yet fully developed, the general atmosphere seems to reflect the open nature of the "sunburnt country". And although this area contains the main circulation roads of the site, it never seems crowded, busy or noisy. One recollects that, in eighteenth century London, James Boswell carefully recorded features which contributed to the contrast between the noise and bustle of Fleet Street and the quiet and calm of the Temple gardens just behind the street. Flinders seems somehow to have reversed much of this and the contrast is between the bustle of the courtyards and the calm of the outside.

The Humanities Courtyard

If the surrounds represent the outback and the courtyards the gardens, the lake is parkland. The area is somehow reminiscent of the English landscape gardens with a decided Australian accent, reflecting the park-like landscape of the southern Adelaide Hills. It is not just the trees, which are mainly eucalyptuses in variety, which provide the Australian feeling. It is also the birds. The birds are attracted by the extensive plantings and the water in the lake and they come in numbers and variety. All sorts of brightly coloured birds, cockatoos, rosellas, galahs and the rest, fly around the trees; a pelican is a frequent fisher in the lake.

The Social Sciences North courtyard

At the top of the arts side of the hill and, for the moment, the last building on that side, is the Law and Commerce Building in which Legal Studies resides. One is frequently told that the building has been awarded an architectural prize. And indeed it has but, creditable though it may be, the prize was not one of the major ones. The chief merit of the building is that it works; but it has other merits too. It uses the slope cleverly in the way that it incorporates two very large lecture rooms and a moot court on the lowest level. It also maintains the theme of the linked courtyards whilst providing a building which is, stylistically, as much of its time as all the others, though whether one calls it "high tech" or "post-modern" might be difficult to say. (You have to go about a kilometre from the university site to see what is, even on a world scale, a rarity, a deconstructionist building).

The Social Sciences South Courtyard

In England it is difficult to think of many universities of the '60s whose sites are worth visiting for their own sakes - and the present writer visited most of them. The best parts of most of them are centred on buildings and landscapes which long pre-date the university itself. Flinders started with a bleak and windswept hill but is now a good site. It is not entirely without fault but it is a fine achievement. Whilst the usual high officials and important committees would, no doubt, have some claim to some of the credit, and the University architect certainly has a good claim to a lot of it, it may also be that the enthusiasm and commitment of the building department staff deserve the rest.