New Designs On The Gold Coast Student Hub

With the Gold Coast Student Hub chalking up another milestone it was time for a little facelift just in time for its 2^nd birthday celebration. Newly installed backlighting has created a subtle shift to the interior warmth of the Hub, but it’s externally where the most noticeable changes have been made with aesthetically designed features enhancing the garden and courtyard spaces thanks to Urbis Gold Coast.

The external structure is now complemented by a beautiful framework of Australian hardwood timber, with festoon lights adorning the covered garden area. The hardwood screen wraps around the front of the building providing better privacy for the courtyard with brilliant waves of colour traversing the floor and spilling over the front wall to create a vibrant street mural at the front of the building. 

Creating A Vibrant Mural

The mural was designed by Claudio Kirac and his team from the Art-Work Agency with a number of the city’s graphic design students contributing to the creation of the work. As with all aspects of the Gold Coast Student Hub it continues to be a space created by students for students, so having the graphic design students on board was a key part of the project.

With so many design students today working in the digital realm the project has been a wonderful opportunity to gain some real-world experience with a tactile project. June is a Korean student at Griffith University and says it’s the first time she’s worked with paint.

“It’s the first time I’ve had the chance to do something like this – I’m excited. It’s such a cool environment at the Gold Coast Student Hub and I feel proud to be involved in this project.”

Students working on the new mural

 Another design student contributing to the artwork is Jasmin, originally from Mackay in Queensland.

“I came to the Gold Coast because I wanted more opportunity, both as a creative student and for work. This is one of my first experiences of painting on a large scale. It’s great to be contributing to the legacy of the Gold Coast Student Hub through this artwork.”

Invitation Through Colour

Claudio Kirac says the concept is an abstract of organic shapes that reference back to things found in nature on the Gold Coast and was designed to be very inviting and colourful to draw attention to the newly expanded section of the Hub. He feels that having the graphic design students involved is an important aspect of their personal growth as artists.

“We’ve engaged design students to learn some brush skills and to better understand murals. It’s all about getting hands on skills. Creativity is such a good way to bring people together – you only have to look at the smiles on the student’s faces as they work on this project.

“A lot of design students these days work almost exclusively in the digital space. So for these guys to be working in a tactile space by creating a three dimensional work, they can then take photos and rework it back into a digital abstract form and load it back into the computer – it really becomes an endless loop of design possibility.”

Claudio Kirac leads the project

*Photos courtesy of Art-Work Agency and Trevor Jackson