Woods Bagot and ERA-co bring engineering to the centre of campus life at Macquarie University’s newest campus addition. Grounded by adaptive reuse and designed as a living ecosystem, the new facility signals a shift in how universities design for curiosity, belonging and innovation through STEM education.
Macquarie University’s new Engineering Innovation Building stands at the centre of campus life. The facility merges the technical demands of engineering and astrophysics with a distinctly human-centred approach to learning. The result is both robust and generous, technically sophisticated yet unexpectedly soft. It’s a building that puts engineering on display, drawing students and inviting the broader community inside.
“From the beginning, the question was simple: how do we create a building where students walk in and feel as though their engineering careers have already begun?” says Woods Bagot Associate Principal Alissandra Johnston.
Designed by Woods Bagot, with Strategic Briefing by ERA-co, the project team developed experiential principles that would ground the project’s design approach.
“I’ve worked in Education Consulting for 10 years, and Macquarie University had one of the best briefs I’ve ever seen,” says ERA-co Strategic Director Caitlin Murray.
“They were really ambitious about the user experience. They told us they want to stop education from being a chore – where everyone’s favourite day of the week to be Monday, because students are so excited to come into this building and learn.”
Working closely with staff and students, the team unpacked the patterns of project-based learning, iterative prototyping, industry immersion, and fluid movement between different modes of working.
Murray says, “Rather than create discrete, timetable-bound rooms, the building was designed to behave like an active studio for project-based learning: open, porous, and constantly in use.”
Central to the design is what Johnston describes as “sticky spaces”, carefully designed areas that naturally draw students to campus and encourage spontaneous interactions that fuel learning.
“When people have been working and studying from home or able to do things remotely, you need spaces that are going to pull students together,” she explains.
One of the project’s most significant strategic moves was the decision to retain the existing 9 Wally’s Walk building.
The team proposed to keep parts of the existing structure, reimagine its role, and anchor the new facility directly at the heart of the campus.
This approach unlocked a series of layered benefits. The existing building became home to dry labs, offices and lower-intensity learning spaces, while a new purpose-built wing to the east accommodated high-service engineering workshops, heavy machinery and the dramatic Integration Hall for Australian Astronomical Optics. Connecting the two is a central, light-filled Field, an urban room where campumjms, industry and engineering visibly intersect.
The ground plane is designed as a sequence of stages, spaces that are performative, flexible and inherently public. The Makerspace, located at the corner of Wally’s Walk, is the building’s headline act: a double-height workshop that places student teams and their work on immediate display.
“We thought about the building as a series of stages, platforms for different modes of learning,” says Johnston. “You walk in and immediately understand how adaptable it is. Every space works hard, every volume is connected, and you can see activity happening everywhere.”
The central Field exemplifies this multi-modal thinking. Students can sit there eating lunch, working on homework or testing fabrications, while evening and weekend events transform the same space into a community hub for presentations, robot competitions, or other student showcases. Informal learning terraces, an open forum and suspended mezzanine observation deck create a dynamic, interactive atmosphere.
“We knew that we wanted to include viewing platforms in the communal space,” says Johnston. “It’s always going to serve its primary purpose as a university, but we were thinking about how the space would transform for exhibition nights or as a viewing platform for the robot wars that happen on campus. So we included bridge links that are really open, with three-storey voids that allow students across each level to watch the action from the mezzanines above.”
“From the beginning, the question was simple: how do we create a building where students walk in and feel as though their engineering careers have already begun?”
Further along, a series of glass-fronted student club garages extends the notion of visibility. Here, engineering teams work on year-long projects within workshop bays that stand as miniature storefronts of ideas in progress.
“The garages are my favourite part of the building,” says Murray. “Each year, students compete to build the fastest human-powered vehicle. Each club has its own space with glass tilt-up doors, so the garages themselves become part of the exhibition. Anyone walking through can see the work evolving throughout the semester.”
At the centre of the building sits the AAO Integration Hall, a three-storey, crane-equipped laboratory where astronomical instrumentation is assembled at full scale before being shipped to observatories around the world. A constellation of slot windows offers glimpses into this extraordinary work, sometimes open and active, but equipped to shut out all light, as sometimes the team needs to work in total darkness for specialised testing.
“That Integration Hall is where our industry partners are building instruments for space that have never been seen before,” says Murray. “Students can look up from their own projects and think, that’s my career. It makes every late night and every assignment feel worthwhile, because they can see real engineers working on real projects right there beside them.”
With so many disciplines under one roof, materiality needed to be both expressive and pragmatic. The architectural approach emphasised robustness, clarity and a certain confident modesty. The existing brick building remains legible and strengthened through upgraded glazing and shading, while the new wing introduces a distinctive metal façade, a triangulated pattern inspired by the dappled canopy of Wally’s Walk and the structural logic of engineering trusses.
“Engineering has a boldness to it, but it also has a softness,” says Johnston. “We wanted the façade to reflect both, the structural clarity of trusses layered with the dappled light of the trees along Wally’s Walk.”
Using three different metal panels, the façade shifts character throughout the day. In summer, it mirrors the density of the tree line. In winter, its geometric folds catch the low sun and echo the branching patterns of bare limbs.
A new extension at the front of 9 Wally’s Walk anchors the corner of Wally’s Walk and Eastern Road, creating a direct visual connection into the engineering building. Named ‘The Forum’, this amphitheatre space will host lectures, film screenings and presentations in one of the campus’s most visible locations. It’s a space designed for engagement—students connect with the pedestrian flow outside, while passers-by catch glimpses of the creativity within.
Inside the Field, exposed steel trusses support a run of sawtooth skylights that wash the building in soft southern light. It is an architectural heart that unifies four interconnected volumes into a single, breathable experience, one that feels open, navigable and intuitively social.
“The whole building is designed to break down hierarchy,” says Johnston. “There isn’t a single traditional lecture theatre. Instead, labs, studios and informal spaces overlap, so students and staff naturally cross paths. You can step out of a lab, grab a cup of tea, and have a spontaneous conversation that becomes part of the learning.”
“The whole building is designed to break down hierarchy. There isn’t a single traditional lecture theatre. Instead, labs, studios and informal spaces overlap, so students and staff naturally cross paths. You can step out of a lab, grab a cup of tea, and have a spontaneous conversation that becomes part of the learning.”
Woods Bagot Director and Global Sector Leader for Education Sarah Ball says, “The collaboration between ERA-co and Woods Bagot unlocked the 7C Network’s ‘Total Place Design’ approach. Starting from first principles, we brought strategic placemaking and architectural design together to shape a facility that deepens the student experience and reinforces campus identity. The outcome for Macquarie University’s Engineering and AAO building exemplifies how thoughtfully designed spaces can engage, inspire and actively support a community of learners.”
Final equipment and finishing touches are underway, with the facility poised to welcome students in Semester1 next year.
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