Visit of the University of Melbourne: Newman College and South Lawn Carpark

The trip:

University Campus:

When I stepped into the campus of University of Melbourne, I got a moment of hesitation. I am suprised by the number of studenst walking around the campus. I feel like I am walking in a Sunday park instead of a school. The campus is flooded by the students while studnets are playing ruby in the lawn, reading in the green grass land, discussing assignment in the canteen. Everything is alive at the moment. The next moment I start the comparison between the campuses of Melbourne Uni and the ACU Aquanas campus, they are different in the number of students, the scale and the atmospheric. Even though the students are all higher education students but I can still smeel the differences from them, while Melbourne Uni students are confident and get the pride in their eyes, the ACU Uni students are friendly and get the harmony in their eyes.

Walk along the campus from Gate 10 along the modern and classical building in the campus the first college come into my eyes, which is St. Mary College, pass by it, I saw the Newman College.

Newman College:

The first impression for me of the Newman College is it is a classical building, somehow I feel like the mood of the college of Harry Porter.

Newman College consisted of three main buildings, the big chapel, the domitary building with cloister and the new domitary building. All of them created a well defined courtyard space for student to use, the entrance of the college is not clear for the strangers, and the experience for me is I got the wrong entrance that I went to the central dinning building while I have been told by a cold signage to go back and found the proper entrance.

I feel like I am stranger when I walk into the college, although the arrangement of the hall is simple and definitely not a problem for a year 5 architecture student. But I have the strong sense, maybe it well contained space and the spatial arrangment let me feel like I do not belong to this area. Maybe the dress code, maybe the people inside the college make me feel like that anyway I definitely don't feel like I would like to stay there for longer if I am not the student in there.

Anyway, there is one thing that I cannot deny is the building is good, the central dining hall originally is the chapel form a well hierachy for the domitary, joining up two wings while the cloister has the beam and columns that formed up a poetic sense of light and shadow. The courtyard is just a courtyard but this is enough for the reason that the building define it well and let it stands out and make it functionable.


The Central dinning hall joining up two wings of the domitary

The central courtyard


The interior of the Dining hall although I am told not to take any interior photo but I took this before the warning.



The poetic Light and shawdow formed in the cloister


The aerial perspective of Newman College


South Lawn Carpark:

The South Lawn Carpak is originally the climax of my excursion of this week but when I arrived there I was disappointed, because I cannot find any roots of trees there. Anyway the columns are nice for an underground carpark but ..................




The actual carpark




The imaginary section of the carpark



When I leave the uni, I passed by the University Square and what did I discover there is a walkway which defined by the frame and wire and teh greenary.