“Law is usually a thing of darkness,” says former High Court judge Michael Kirby AC, evoking black robes and gloomy chambers. “But this room is magnificent!”

The room in question is the moot court at the recently completed Michael Kirby Law School building at Macquarie University where undergraduates gather to conduct mock trials. Suspended above the north-east corner of an oblong edifice overlooking the campus’s main pedestrian thoroughfare, the practice court is cylindrical and filled with daylight; effectively an aerie-like theatre in the round.