University campuses are now a fixture of practically every major city in Australia but often go under-appreciated as built environments. This collaborative history sheds light on the origins and evolution of campus design from the Second World War to the current day. It explores built legacies and design strategies set against the backdrop of the development of higher education in Australia’s continuing cultural evolution.

Times change but what remains is the importance of the design, landscape and buildings of university campuses in shaping and supporting the quality of life and work of the university community. Campuses profoundly shape the immediate experiences, as well as the memories of significant times, in the lives of those who pass through them. They are substantial new manifestations of urban civic life.

The essays on modern Australian universities presented in Campus are deep and wide, setting their features in the socio-economic, political and urban context in which they have developed. This is a particularly rich collection from which to reflect on the particularities and commonalities of the Australian university campus.

Andrew Saniga is an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, Planning and Urbanism at the University of Melbourne. His research includes the history of landscape architecture in Australia and his writings have documented and explained key designers and projects with an emphasis on the mid-twentieth century. His book Making Landscape Architecture in Australia (2012) won the Victoria Medal from the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects. He teaches design and history of landscape architecture and is a registered landscape architect with the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects and a member of DOCOMOMO International.

Robert Freestone is a Professor of Planning in the School of Built Environment at the University of New South Wales. His research interests are in planning history, metropolitan planning, and heritage. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, the Planning Institute of Australia, and the Institute of Australian Geographers. His books include Iconic Planned Communities and the Challenge of Change (2019), Designing the Global City (2019), Planning Metropolitan Australia (2018), Place and Placelessness Revisited (2016), Urban Nation: Australia’s Planning Heritage (2010), Cities, Citizens and Environmental Reform (2009), Designing Australia’s Cities (2007), and Urban Planning in a Changing World (2000).