Business & Innovation Centre

The Business and Innovation Centre is a key facility in the new Desert Knowledge Precinct, both in its long term function of developing business and initiatives based on desert knowledge and as a facility demonstrating key principals of energy efficient and environmentally sustainable design.

It is intended that the Business and Innovation Centre be a social hub for the precinct, emphasizing the importance of informal communication in developing knowledge and ideas and ensuring the precinct is a vibrant and vital social place. 

 The facility is designed as a compact, single storey building rather than as an elongated form to meet the site constraints and develop efficient circulation.  The plan is predominately rectilinear, as an efficient planning strategy, and to maximise options for wall materials and treatments and minimize wastage. 

The north aspect has been maximized within the tight east west constraints by creating an entry courtyard, to the east as approached from the car park, between the Business and Innnovation Centre and future CSIRO facility.  This also serves the requirement to stage the construction so that CSIRO can be constructed at a later date with minimum disruption to the Business and Innovation Centre.

An entry courtyard has been created to the east designed to accommodate a grove of young to mature corkwood trees, is the primary access point and provides a link to the closest carpark to the east of the Centre.   

The staff room has been ‘pushed out’ from the building line into the Desert People’s Courtyard.  Large windows and glazed doors on the north and south of the Staff Room provide a transparency to give the facility an accessible human face, as well as to identify it as a ‘meeting place’ open to all members of the precinct. 

Internally the facility has been designed for ‘loose fit, long life’ to the extent possible within the brief.  The office areas of the different organizations occupying the Business and Innovation Centre are located adjacent to each other, so that expansions or reductions in area can be accommodated easily. 

High-ceilinged, open-plan office areas are located along the south edge of the Business and Innovation Centre office areas, allowing natural light to penetrate into the building to the enclosed offices located deeper inside the structure.

Functional areas such as reception, meeting room, staff room and toilets that can be shared by the Business and Innovation Centre and CSIRO have been located in the centre of the building for easy access. This also allows these facilities to be used for functions independently of the office areas.