The new Health Clinic is intended to relieve allied workforce shortages, providing students with clinical placements and hands-on experience to develop skills and confidence before entering the workforce.

The facility is designed to transition students from theoretical teaching to pre-clinical and professional practice, working under close supervision of experienced clinicians. As the largest interdisciplinary university clinic in Victoria, the new facility will help to train an additional 400 allied health professionals every year.  

The four-storey building includes discipline-specific and multipurpose consultation rooms; specialist treatment and preparation rooms; shared, flexible office spaces for clinical educators; and reception, amenity and support service areas. The facility will offer a range of allied services to the public, including orthoptics, speech pathology, podiatry, dietetics and nutrition, physiotherapy, audiology and occupational therapy, as well as psychology services.

The patient-centred, multidisciplinary clinic creates an inclusive, welcoming environment that strengthens community connection, supports wellbeing, and enhances the student experience. Global Education Sector Leader Sarah Ball says La Trobe Health Clinic inverts the traditionally inward-facing clinical typology, creating a legible, daylit and connected environment to reduce stress and improve care outcomes.  

“The contemporary facility’s inclusive design supports user dignity and wellbeing,” says Ball. “Utilising a thin floorplate and intuitive circulation, the building incorporates clear sightlines and naturally lit corridors to reinforce user orientation, improve comfort, and reduce stress.”

A unique feature of the Bundoora site is its vast network of meandering creeks, moats and waterways. Containing substantial native planting, these ecological green corridors provide unexpected moments of connection to the natural environment

With biophilic design having tangible impact on healing and stress, the design team strived to create strong visual connection between building occupants and their surroundings. Waiting areas on each floor are positioned on the façade with north and east views to provide patients and visitors with natural outlook. These strategies directly address the common disconnection experienced from clinical buildings, replacing this with a clear sense of place, time of day and campus context.

Woods Bagot Associate Principal Clare Connan says the building has been informed by the ecological landscape, its rectilinear form molded and broken down into an organic built expression.

“We’ve taken a rational, solid block and imagined it eroded and sculpted by the environment,” says Connan. “By incorporating cranked and folded geometries, we’ve created a building expression that looks endemic to its context and provides a robust, crafted expression in the landscape.”   

The building exterior was delivered as a traditional brick cavity construction and hand-laid over several months, glazed in colours that reflect the local flora and terra, including foliage green, wattle yellow and earth red brick. In the interior spaces, timber and indoor planting have been deployed liberally, and designers have introduced a soft palette of eucalypt green and pink clay.

Landscape architects Emergent designed generous forecourts and internal courtyards planted with diverse native species. The indoor winter garden provides greenspace connection and ushers light into the deep floorplate.

La Trobe University Pro Vice Chancellor of Health Innovation Professor Russ Hoye says the new facility will provide students with optimal conditions for an introduction to clinical practice.

“Our new state-of-the-art facilities will give our health students the very best environment to learn and succeed, which in turn will benefit the local workforce, leading to more and better healthcare professionals for communities across Australia,” says Prof. Hoye.

La Trobe Health Clinic Building has been designed using all-electric building services, targeting a minimum 5-Star Green Star rating under the Green Building Council of Australia. The facility has achieved a 20 percent reduction in upfront carbon emissions and operational energy use, as well as a 45 percent reduction in potable water use, and generates onsite renewable energy through solar PV array.

Media enquiries
Isla Sutherland
Content and Communications Manager (Australia & New Zealand)