Campus craftmanship
How an architect is balancing Bond's
legacy masterplan with modern innovation
Connections Precinct Architect Kent Exell of XL Architecture has reflected on two decades shaping the campus, and the challenge of finally realising a Great Hall first imagined by Bond University’s founders.
This isn't your first commission for Bond University. How much of the campus has your fingerprints on it?
I've probably worked on the campus for 20 years. It started with the School of Sustainable Development — I was a key designer with Mirvac on that one. I've done 11 built projects over that time, and probably another 15 unbuilt where we kept testing ideas and looking at what works and what doesn't. I really enjoy working with Bond University. The people are generous and good to work with. The Vice Chancellor's got a real vision for students and the campus, so it's always exciting trying to understand that vision and bring it to life.
Was there something in this project that you refused to compromise on?
It always comes back to tying into the existing campus. Bond is so rich with a great master plan and a fantastic original vision. Anything to do with those core assets, you have to be very careful with.
There's a real formality of procession, a lean geometry, a very definite sense of academia and purpose that comes with this place. That was the non-negotiable for me. Instead of the hard lines of parapet walls, I've broken from that toward a large eaves-and-veranda style. We're still looking at grand walkways and grand vistas, but delivering them in a way that gives a bit more amenity to the campus — somewhere to walk when it rains and not get wet.
The Great Hall has been a missing piece of the campus since its opening. What does it mean to finally be realising it?
This location for the Great Hall was actually in the original vision, back in 1988. What's exciting is that this building creates an edge to the amphitheatre — that grassy university green that gets all that lovely north sun and lake view. It gives that space a frontage, closing it off properly, and that was very deliberate.
A lot of the weight of this new building is about creating its own identity, with its own materials and its own technology, rather than being tied back to that 1988 form of post-modern architecture. We're finding new ways for the architecture to reflect that original Arcadia — that utopian vision Bond was founded on.
The building has gone up remarkably fast. What's made that possible?
We've relied heavily on Building Information Modelling — the whole building is in 3D, right down to the shop drawings. A lot of the work was done off-site: the steel, the precast panels, all completed off-site and brought in to be tilted up.
With around a year left on the build, how's it tracking? Are you on schedule?
It's tracking well — still on program, with a few challenges from the recent rain, but some areas like the level 2 fitout, are flying along.
There's been a deliberate move in this project to put Business and Medicine side by side. How do you design for collaboration without it feeling forced?
Bond is connected by grand walkways, and in those informal spaces between buildings, this building grabs both faculties and makes them walk the same path and share the same place. So just by proximity, we encourage that collaboration. But each faculty's teaching spaces stay very prominent and transparent — they're both showcasing their own expertise.
The Bond Business School's FinTech Hub isn't a technology cave, it's a boardroom vision brought to the front. The glass we're using is almost completely see-through — the highest transparency rate you can get, double-glazed, the highest thermal rating on campus. That's deliberate, so when you walk past you can see exactly what's being taught and the expertise inside.
Each of those spaces then breaks out into a shared outdoor terrace between Medicine and Business, where they have lunch, informal group learning, and genuinely share the same experience.
The new precinct is enormous, yet Bond's whole identity is built on small-group learning. How do you reconcile that?
We start with spaces for one-on-one study, then spaces for small groups of two, three or four, then group those together. You don't start large, you start small and keep building up, so if someone wants to work alone but stay close to everyone else, they can.
We have a corridor eight metres wide, broken into two levels with a step that doubles as a seat. Even that space is broken again into smaller scales — tables of four, six or eight, across two levels. It keeps growing from a small space into a larger one, and before you know it, you're in a 50m grand walkway.
Was there any thought given to preventing the Great Hall from becoming a prestige space that sits empty most of the year?
Definitely. Everybody thinks immediately of graduation, but it's designed to cope with an orchestra performance, a lecture for 300 students, a breakout space. It's got tuneable white LEDs that shift from a soft warm white to a brighter white that encourages study. It doesn't have to be reserved for graduation — it can be part of everyday life.
You were behind the School of Sustainable Development too. How does that thinking show up in this building?
The large eaves reduce heat load and glare while still letting in large amounts of natural daylight, so there's less reliance on artificial lighting. We've got around 480 kilowatts of solar panels generating energy for the campus, and the building's tied into the campus-wide chilled water system — a very efficient way of cooling. There's a lot of low-VOC, low-off-gassing material selection too, tested across its full life cycle.
What would you like a student to feel the first time they walk through the precinct?
I want them to feel that grandeur and generosity that's on this campus.
When you walk under the Arch, there's an immense sense of grandeur. But it's more than that — it's the generosity of space.
Every time I've been on campus with the Vice Chancellor or other staff, they've stopped mid-conversation to help a student who looked lost.
That's the level of generosity I want reflected in the architecture — relationships between people, and between people and environment.
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