Integrated Technology Hub Building 7 | Spowers

Box Hill Institute’s Integrated Technology Hub is a purpose designed technical skills education facility. Built over four levels it fosters collaborative teaching and learning within varying environments. Taking full advantage of exposure to Elgar Road the facility showcases progressive approaches to contemporary vocational education highly aligned to industry requirements. 

Box Hill Institute’s new Integrated Technology Hub is a purpose designed technical skills education facility with a new degree-oriented teaching space above. Adjacent to a previous Spowers project (Building 8) and its distinctive connecting pedestrian bridge, this building boldly continues the architectural discourse of its predecessor in form, scale and materiality reinforcing the Elgar Road frontage.

Built over four levels it fosters collaborative teaching and learning within a multitude of environments. Taking full advantage of its exposure to Elgar Road the facility showcases a multivalent and innovative approach to contemporary vocational education that is highly aligned to industry requirements. 

It is the double height ground floor workshop space forms the heart of this of this facility. The challenge was creating “learning by doing” spaces within a very confined footprint. Put simply the programme was much larger than the space available. The solution came as a series of self-contained curriculum “packages” that could be stacked, deployed and reshuffled much like containers dependant on the timetable. This approach provided a very dense, rich, activated workshop space, one which is all about transparency to the busy Elgar Rd frontage, creating a 24/7 public billboard.

The design for the facility is targeting 5 star Green Star accreditation under GBCA’s Education Rating Tool V.2 (Design).  Significant high performance sustainability outcomes have been addressed in the design. These include, but are not limited to the following:

-Highly insulated façade, comprising of composite aluminium wall and roof panels, insulated low e IGUs with low shading coefficient (SC) and high visible light transmittance (VLT), perforated shading systems and centralised glazed atria with automated parasols.

-Separate HVAC comprising of gas and electric VRV systems with individual BMS, linked and digitally monitored by central BMS.

-Gas fired radiant heating systems and locally switched fans for optimum indoor environmental control foe work shop spaces.

-Automatic blinds controlled via the BMS linked to perimeter façade sensors, with time clock / temperature and occupant override controls.

-Energy efficient T5 lighting for a background level of 320 lux.

-Economical machine room less lifts with regenerative breaking technology.

-Domestic solar hot water system and storage facilities.

-Rainwater tank system for water harvesting and recycling to decrease the water consumption on site.

This building represents the second of three buildings along the eastern edge of Elgar Road, Box Hill, eventually to extend the campus to the corner of Arnold Street. As with the previous building (Building 8) this facility demonstrates a tough edge to the street, responding to the western aspect and the acoustic outbreak from the tough edge of Elgar Rd.

The building presents an educational showcase to the street, exploiting the free exposure. The bold linear façade suggests a directional marker with cladding components that vary in transparency, sheen and finish responding to the internal use and the extreme building orientation.

Precedence is given internally to the main connections through the building, respecting the idea of an elevated campus, punctuated by a series of events and communal spaces.

A significant departure from previous buildings has been the quality of finish, deployment of technology and generosity of the spaces – more akin to modern tertiary facilities - correlating to the emergence of degree courses within this educational context.

Box Hill Institute places a strong emphasis on “learning by doing”, and the key challenge of the project was how to meet the specific technical requirements for teaching each trade within the allocated space. The final design consists of a four level development with a useable floor area of 3,600m2. The top floor is allocated as staff and office space, whilst the third floor represents a mix of different collaborative learning space environments. The flexibility of this teaching floor ensures high utilisation, whilst being able to support the varied curriculum and proposed rapid growth in student numbers.

The greatest idea to overcome in this project was not having the space to supply the individual teaching areas required for each of the trade units. To overcome this, first floor section of the double height area has been used to ‘store’ teaching ‘studios’ on the ceiling, Each of these studios are brought down to the floor for their relevant practical teaching classes, and placed back into storage when not in use. This system not only enabled the Institute to provide a broad curriculum of trade training to a larger cohort of students, but has also allowed the Institute to seek relevant sponsorship for each of the ‘studios’, thereby creating additional income to help support their vast program.