A chancellery is, functionally, an executive office building. It also has crucial ceremonial and symbolic functions, like other civic buildings do. It's the emblem of a university's brand and identity, the face it turns toward its student body, distinguished visitors and the wider world.

ARM’s new chancellery replaced a stumpy 1960s Brutalist structure filled with asbestos and afflicted with concrete cancer. An architectural legacy worth keeping was the brise soleil which we reinterpreted in a contemporary new screen. Made in modules of varying complexity that shift character depending on where you stand – something like Escher tessellations in steel – it fluctuates in scale across the facade serving specific shading needs.

A covered walkway runs around the building in a contemporary version of the traditional university cloister. Framed on two sides by an external colonnade of bespoke columns commissioned with Monash University Museum of Art, it’s an art walk that connects the chancellery to the wider Monash community. Columns designed by artists of different generations, cultural backgrounds and approaches to art practice make it genuinely public and inviting.

Passivhaus principles drove the almost-square plan. To achieve the optimum ratio of volume to façade, we carved two great rounded voids from the building's centre, with a top-floor clerestory ceiling, to bring natural light through all floors. The building meets the Monash Eco-Accord, which is more stringent than Green Star: net zero carbon-emission capability, fully electric, battery-backed, no gas.

A chancellery must be beyond reproach. Housing the university’s leaders, it sets a leadership agenda for value and sustainability in every way: arts, environmental performance, fiscal, workplace, reconciliation. The new chancellery reflects the university’s  lofty ambition and financial responsibility go hand in hand.