The challenge of this program, a marketing space for one of Australia's preeminent universities, was to create connectivity and communicate through space, the qualities that make the University of Queensland a distinct and attractive place to study and research. To collapse the distance between two disparate places - the main campus and this new office space in Washington, DC. The design responds with the creation of a transportational device: a space that projects the UQ identity and experience through an act of architectural and environmental branding. Queensland is well known for the beauty and richness of its natural environment and the University's campus in St. Lucia is famed for its jacaranda trees.
The springtime flowering of the jacaranda is a key cultural and environmental event in the life of the campus. Thus the central space of the design is clad in wood screens which feature an abstracted pattern of the jacaranda in bloom. This space binds and connects all of the secondary spaces - office, conference and work rooms. There is no additional circulation - all movements pass through the central space.
The secondary spaces are glimpsed and connected through the layers of the screen wall. This creates a variety of experience. When the screen panels are backlit with artificial light highlighting the rich purple wall color, there is the sensation of viewing the flowering tree. Viewed from inside the offices where screens are layered with transparent glass walls, there is the sensation of looking through a grove. The screens mask office functions behind while still allowing view across. The richness of these effects create the primary orientation to not only the space, but to the life of the University itself.
