Turning a Shed into a Qantas Lounge

To transform an already established university, spread over a substantial amount of land, with existing infrastructure, into a hub of sustainability and environmental innovation is a fairly impossible challenge.

And it’s one that Paul Barton, Director of Business Support, Buildings and Property at Monash University, has risen to. Like every impossible challenger, he pushes past limits and at each stage of his quest, his team invents creative solutions to answer every problem.

Paul Barton at Monash University, ©Monash University

Take the James Gormley Bike Arrival Station (JGBAS) for instance. Monash encourages students to bike ride to the university and has a “shed” in place to store the bikes. However Paul was informed that no one was using this shed due to the incredibly sweatiness and general nastiness of bike riding long distances before having to sit in lectures.

One student is known to have commented “When I bike ride to university, no one will sit next to me in lectures due to the smell.”

As Paul often says,

If you ask people to do something, you need the infrastructure to support it.”

And this infrastructure definitely needed changing if Paul was to achieve his goal of a sustainable university supported by eco-friendly transport.

Step 1 was tackling the politics and bureaucracy regarding funding. Luckily, Monash is very invested in their sustainable reputation and Paul’s team received the go-ahead for total JGBAS renovation. The second part of this challenge was the actual renovation. Teaming up with engineers, architects and designers, the JGBAS was transformed into the luxurious, changing room and hair dryer outfitted promoter of eco-transport it is today. Free to all, Monash students are able to securely leave their bikes there, change and iron their clothes and repair their bikes, finally being “treated like Qantas club members” (Paul).

Thanks to the determined leadership of Paul and his sustainable team, bike riding is on the rise at Monash, with more and more students flocking to the JGBAS. In fact, membership has increased so much that the JGBAS is now expanding to cater for even more eco-aware students. And every student that rides to school is slowly but surely changing our world. Although his quest to turn Monash University completely sustainable is far from over, Paul shows how by creatively reimagining and building upon what already exists, change is more than possible.

The James Gormley Bike Arrival Station ©Monash University

But with every step in an impossible quest, there’s always more that can be done, there’s always improvements, lessons learnt and further advice given. While initial advertisement of the JGBAS by holding a movie session there was brilliant, many new students to Monash aren’t aware of the awesome luxury of the JGBAS. So I would recommend creating a “hidden” movie cinema club that holds regular movie sessions in the JGBAS or in other sustainable locations around Monash to increase the appeal and awareness of these amazing facilities. As he expands the JGBAS, I would also recommend setting up bike hubs across other sections of the campus. Monash University is LARGE and often this hinders students using these facilities if they’re out of the way...

Here at the Impossible, we can’t wait to see exactly how far the Monash sustainability will soar in their quest! Who knows, one day Monash University may even be one of the first 100% sustainable and off the grid universities in the world…

If, like Paul Barton, you have an ongoing impossible project, please send us through your story so together we can embrace the IMPOSSIBLE!!

#embraceimpossible