The new student precinct at the University of Melbourne marks what is becoming overwhelmingly clear about Australia’s university model: prestige and outward appearance count for more than the quality of education for students, and certainly takes precedence over ensuring fair and secure conditions for those who work in these institutions. It is therefore not so much the aesthetic or design of the building itself, but that it reflects something more pernicious that lies at the heart of higher education: a hollowing out of the system.

Crown Sydney drags the Australian ugliness out of the twentieth century and into our globalised present: a gratuitous embellishment of the harbour and city skyline, a priapic glass monument to late-capitalist excess and neoliberal myopia.

People are protective of their space and often suspicious of outsiders. People are cramped together in auspicious looking high-rises, disturbingly typical and askew. Outside of my inner-west bubble, I often talk to friends who have lived in Ashfield for years, a suburb that completely transformed and reshaped within a matter of months.

Tempelhof airport sits at the southern tip of Berlin’s city centre. The immense building, 1230 metres in length, curls around the airfield. Tall, narrow windows cascade down its facade, and an almost human-sized metal eagle’s head stands at the main entrance. The airport, which ceased operations in 2008, was largely designed and built under the Nazi regime. Once at the centre of Hilter’s vision of ‘World Capital Germania’, the Nazis’ megalomaniacal project intended Tempelhof to be the gateway to a Europe commanded by the Third Reich.