Building 3, Health Sciences: Holmesglen Institute of TAFE, Moorabbin
Holmesglen required a state of the art facility in which to offer its new nursing degree and associated health science diploma courses. The building was required to emulate an operational hospital in terms of the nursing activities and the facilities they could be expected to encounter in their workplace.
Project Details
Architects
DL Design Group
Award
WINNER: Category 2: New Construction/New Individual Facility
Project Overview
Holmesglen required a state of the art facility in which to offer its new nursing degree and associated health science diploma courses. The building was required to emulate an operational hospital in terms of the nursing activities and the facilities they could be expected to encounter in their workplace.
The outstanding design component within the building had to be the provision of a simulated immersive learning facility, which would form the backbone component of real life scenario emulations. This requirement was developed as a result of extensive local and overseas research into world best training facilities within the Health Science domain. Extensive user group sessions were conducted to refine the teaching objectives and the facilities that would support them. The design provided the ability to create the real life scenarios while allowing the high level technologically advanced training aids to be monitored and managed from a non-intrusive back room environment.
The use of advanced audiovisual tools has enabled the follow up sessions to be conducted in a number of local customized debriefing rooms. The design also incorporated a concealed viewing area for students not involved in the scenarios to watch and listen to the simulation. The building was required to provide a number of supporting nursing wards, such as nursery, traditional multi bed ward, emergency and intensive care units. These facilities also integrate with the audiovisual systems provided in the immersive learning unit and can be distributed to larger traditional teaching areas such as classrooms and lecture theatres.
The building design also included auxiliary health science teaching areas for allied health and community nursing studies, together with large scientific laboratories for microbiology and biochemistry. Since the opening of the building, the Institute has received extensive requests from other local and international training facilities to study its design and operation. It has been widely acknowledged as being a leading training facility for the Health Science area of study.
The design of the building has fully met the educational objectives provided to the architect and has allowed the teaching faculty to implement all Holmesglen’s training objectives. The building was required to meet BCA requirements to be energy efficient and to continue to reduce energy consumption levels by 15% per annum. To this end a range of alternative technologies were incorporated into the design including motion sensors, daylight controls, rainwater harvesting for toilet flushing and a gas cogeneration plant.
