The University of the Sunshine Coast’s Sunshine Coast campus is renowned for its attractive natural setting, which in addition to providing an environment of exception quality for staff, students and visitors, forms a key element in the identity of the institution itself.

The 2012 Campus Master Plan proposes a number of landscape strategies by which to underpin the ongoing management of the campus’ natural environment. Foremost of these strategies is the recognition of ecological interconnectivity, a strategy which understands trees, grasslands, natural habitats and bodies of water not as isolated landscape elements, but rather as forming an integrated natural system, reliant on and contributing to the surrounding regional ecology.

This approach encourages the University to explore ways in which the more structured landscape areas, such as the open campus green or axial tree plantings, can be seamlessly merged with the regenerated bushland prevalent elsewhere on the campus.

The campus landscape will continue to develop progressively, in a time frame that generally precedes the commencement of building works. As a consequence, some of the later sites nominated for development in the 2012 Campus Master Plan will in fact be developed in an already mature natural setting, generally requiring further landscape design only in order to ensure the immediate building context is integrated with the surrounding ecological systems.