Cairns Botanic Gardens Visitors Centre

CAIRNS BOTANIC GARDENS VISITORS CENTRE, CAIRNS QLD ($4.7M)
“WORKING WITH COUNCILTO DELIVER WORLD CLASS DESIGN EXCELLENCE”

In June 2009 CWA were invited by the Cairns Regional Council to enter a limited competition for the design of a new Visitors’ Centre for the Cairns Botanical Garden s. The design brief called for an iconic “green” building, which would aid in creating potential new opportunities and connections to existing facilities, communities and groups and provide world-class staff and administration facilities.

Our design response was to produce an ESD canopy, which would provide an iconic gateway into the gardens and the tanks performance spaces as well as providing a cool and dry zone all year round for tourists visiting the often hot and wet environment of the tropical gardens.

Through work shopping with mechanical, structural, hydraulic and landscape consultants we were also able to incorporate other ESD initiatives into the canopy concept including : thermal /solar chimneys for thermal convection ventilation, water harvesting for reuse in the building and landscape , chilled and shaded thermal massing to generate “coolth”, renewable energy generation non-reliant on fossil fuels or power-grid as well as produce opportunities for modulization and off-site fabrication. Once awarded the project in March 2010 CWA began an extensive exercise of intensive workshopping, interrogating and testing all elements of the original design brief both from a user and facilities management perspective.

The outcome of the workshopping and design review was collective desire to develop a sustainable outcome which wasn’t reliant on complex technological solutions, or required perpetual up keep and management but still maintained maximum amenity for all the users for the whole year. Using a mixed mode system which incorporates off the shelf technology we were able to develop a series of world first solutions for both the office and public components of the project. By focusing on working with rather than against members of the user and client group we were able to achieve broad council support for what is a challenging and innovative architectural proposal. We are providing a world-class ESD, flexible office and mixed use public facility.

The building represents a re-think and new direction for tropical design in Far North Queensland moving away from the conventional solutions to a new contemporary and progressive solution for a new contemporary and progressive Cairns.

The project construction was completed by Hansen Yuncken in August 2011.