Purpose-Built Indigenous Learning Space | University of Melbourne
As a specialist tertiary education architect, HATZ delivered a purpose-built Indigenous learning space for the University of Melbourne: shaped by structured community consultation, resolved as a genuine architectural commitment. Not a gesture toward cultural identity. A decision to place it at the centre of the design.
The Challenge
A purpose-built Indigenous space is not a fit-out category. It is a responsibility. The University of Melbourne understood this. So did we.
The challenge was clear at its core: to create a space that the Medicine, Dentistry and Health Indigenous student community could recognise as genuinely theirs. Where cultural identity was not applied after the design was resolved but was the reason the design existed at all. Where every decision, functional and spatial, was grounded in what that community needed, not what the institution assumed they did.
Indigenous Study Space
At the University of Melbourne's Alan Gilbert Building, a vacant, unused office had become the site for something the University was clear about from the outset: a purpose-built space for their Medicine, Dentistry and Health Indigenous student community.
We conversed with Indigenous students until we understood what they needed: furniture, privacy, cultural expression, access. A space to gather, to study, to belong. One that reflected their identity, not the institution's assumptions about it.
Opaque gradient glazing creates privacy without isolation. Banquette seating and a kitchenette hold the informal moments, before and after class, where community builds itself. Dedicated access control makes a clear statement: this space belongs to its community.
Then we handed the wall back. Neutral walls held ready for Indigenous MDHS students' own artwork and the AIATSIS map: a space designed to be completed by its community, not its architects. A sanctuary, not an afterthought.
Client Voice
"The Indigenous Study Space demonstrates what happens when an architect listens carefully and resolves the brief with conviction." Neslihan Goc, Associate Director, Infrastructure & Facilities, University of Melbourne.
Why this matters
When a student walks into a space and recognises it as theirs, that is not a design outcome. It is a human one. At the University of Melbourne, HATZ approached the Indigenous Study Space brief with one starting point: genuine listening. The architecture follows from that. It always does.
This is architecture that shapes how we learn. And how we belong.
Designing a Future Worth Learning In™
Overview
Client: University of Melbourne
Location: Level 1, Alan Gilbert Building, 161 Barry Street, Carlton VIC
Type: Institutional Fit-Out
Role: Principal Consultant
Scope of work: Full Services
Budget & size: $1.5M ex GST - 250m2
Completed: Oct 2025
Team
Hatz: Steve Hatzellis, Genny Wells, Clive Chan, Liam Katsos, Evelyn Fang
Project Management: UOM Capital Works Project Management
Consultant Engineers: NJM Consultants Pty Ltd
Building Surveyor: RBS Building Surveyors
Head Contractor: Struxture
Photographer: HATZ