Material Values of Late Modern Campus Buildings | Susan Holden

Late modern concrete buildings that were a cornerstone of post–World War II university expansion in Australia are reaching a point where they require conservation, adaptation or replacement. Material perspectives reveal the entanglement of cultural and environmental values in managing the legacy of this building stock. The University of Queensland St. Lucia campus is taken as a case study to examine this entanglement. At UQ, the cultural heritage values of its modernist buildings are not well understood or acknowledged through existing heritage legislation. At the same time, the decarbonization agenda presents compelling reasons to keep and maintain buildings, particularly concrete ones with high embodied energy, despite the challenges presented by carbonation to the longevity of reinforced concrete as a material. In this article we explore how a material view both advances and complicates understanding of the UQ campus environment, alongside the potential for new digital tools to integrate qualitative and quantitative data and give agency to the university as an ecological custodian of its environment. Through analysis of a selection of 1960s and 1970s exposed concrete buildings, we explore how material values change the imperatives of built environment custodianship, and how energetics is changing our understanding of architectural materials such as concrete.

The challenges involved in managing the legacy of late modern buildings on university campuses exemplify the broader challenge of reconciling economic, social, environmental, and cultural values in the management of the greater built environment. In this respect campuses have the potential to operate as sites for experimentation and innovation in ecological design, as they have done in the field of urban design in previous decades. Contemporary campuses, like cities, demand environmental accountability in decision-making processes and design ethos, in both the production of new buildings and the management of existing building stock.

Concrete buildings from the post–World War II era of campus expansion present a particular challenge for the reconciliation of the cultural and environmental values of late modernist architecture in both heritage and asset management protocols. This era of campus expansion was international in its reach and significant for marking the democratization of the university institution. In Australia, where this article focuses its attention, new campuses and campus expansions between 1960 and 1975 included the construction of significant ensembles of buildings centered on student life: student union buildings, theaters, ceremonial buildings such as great halls, and outdoor gathering spaces such as amphitheaters and bush courts. These buildings were explicit in their material use and, in many cases, came to define the civic purpose of the modern university. Representing an extensive use of exposed reinforced concrete construction, these buildings also possess high embodied carbon values that will increasingly factor into the carbon accounting required to achieve net zero emissions in mitigation of the impacts of climate change. Many buildings constructed during this period are now, often prematurely, deemed obsolete, due to changes in their program of uses and neglected maintenance. Heritage protection has been achieved for only a small selection of them, and building adaptation to align with new programs and climate adaption can be complex and costly.

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