by Jenna Reed
Indesign (Australia)
no. 47, December 2011 - February 2012
pp. 104-111
Ecosciences Precinct featured in the December 2011 issue of Australian magazine Indesign. The article notes the revitalisation of Boggo Road and its current transformation from a notoriously dangerous place (being the site of a former prison), to a mixed-use area, with residential, retail, commercial and research facilities, with the first of these being the Ecosciences Precinct.
The Precinct houses over 1,000 scientists and is the largest laboratory building in Australia. With an "attention grabbing" silhouette, the inside is a journey with various levels, wings and links running through the building.
The article notes that, "Rather than organising the various government departments and CSIRO divisions into separate areas, the key driver was to create a building that allowed scientists from different entities operating in the same areas to work alongside each other, understanding how they worked and organising flexible spaces that can be reconfigured in the future, if and when needed, required an enormous amount of consultation."
Describing the development of the design, HASSELL Principal Mark Roehrs is quoted in the article saying, "We weren't briefing people by organisation or hierarchy - we were briefing by the type of science. So, it wasn't just a collaborative outcome expectation, it was driven by a collaborative consultation process." The briefing continued after the initial period – in fact reviewing took place throughout the process and as Mark notes, "I think that has been part of the success of the building. When the scientists moved in, they had all been through the building in the last phase of construction to check it off and say they were happy and knew it worked."
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