Kambri Precinct, Australian National University

Kambri creates a new heart for the Australian National University, bringing student life, teaching, culture and community together in a more open and connected campus precinct.

Atelier Ten led the environmental design for the student accommodation and wider precinct, working with ANU, Lendlease and BVN to align the project with the University’s One Planet Living ambition. Our role was to translate that ambition into practical design decisions, supported by energy analysis, daylight modelling, façade optimisation and precinct-wide operational carbon modelling.

For the accommodation, we set clear indoor environmental quality targets for daylight, thermal comfort and natural ventilation. These targets helped shape spaces that feel bright, calm and comfortable, with less reliance on mechanical conditioning.

Canberra’s climate was central to the analysis. We used climate-based daylight modelling, drawing on local weather and sky data across a typical year, to understand how light would behave in rooms at different times of day and across the seasons. This helped the team refine window size, glass type and shading, balancing useful daylight with glare control and energy performance.

The project team adopted panelised prefabricated façades for the student housing, the first use of this approach in Australia at this scale. Atelier Ten supported the strategy by testing airtightness and thermal continuity, alongside solar control. The analysis showed that, on selected façades, heat gain and glare could be managed through the façade design and glazing specification without separate external shading. Off-site assembly reduced time on site and helped deliver a tighter, more consistent envelope.

At the precinct scale, our energy analysis showed the cooling plant accounted for roughly 11% of site electricity use. That finding helped focus attention on right-sizing the plant, improving low-load efficiency and considering thermal storage to smooth demand peaks. The strategy also explored on-site solar as a practical way to reduce grid demand and support ANU’s One Planet carbon budget.

Kambri shows how a tailored sustainability pathway can work when performance is embedded early and tested through design. The result is accommodation that is comfortable to live in, efficient to operate and aligned with the client’s own framework for long-term value.