Macquarie University Incubator | North Ryde, NSW, Australia | 2017

Architects: Architectus
Client: Macquarie University
Contractor: Lipman
Photographers: Brett Boardman

The Macquarie University Incubator aims to amplify and imbue deep thinking around innovation, bringing together entrepreneurial spirit, ingenuity, collaboration and support. 

A place for startups to evolve their ideas and grow their businesses, the Incubator was designed to respond to the diverse and changing needs of its occupants, as well as two key aspects that informed the design of the space; a relocatable building and a short timeframe for its implementation.

The architects looked to timber as the main construction material for the Incubator for its capacity to be beautifully engineered, swiftly fabricated to high quality, and for its potential for future dis-assembly and relocation, with the majority of components prefabricated offsite to ensure rapid construction on site and minimal disruption to the concurrent university semester.

The resulting building was completed within five months of construction commencing, and despite flexibility and relocation being a strong factor of the original design brief, the Incubator has become so well loved that it’s likely it will now remain permanently in its current location.

Architectus specified a harmonious palette of materials, inclusive of timbers and cork, throughout the Incubator to create a sequence of spaces that are tactile and characteristically warm, and somewhat unexpectedly, the natural aroma of this timber palette is a pleasure for its users!

A variety of timber species were used throughout, including a ceiling diaphragm of cross laminated timber, large span laminated veneer lumber beams and glulam V columns, as well as spotted gum hardwood and cork for the interior floor surfaces, and plywood for the external walls.

These materials allowed us to take an innovative approach to design, while offering potential for a very high degree of reuse should the building ever be relocated.

The Incubator was conceived as a pair of pavilions, each with flexible layouts that lend themselves to the future adaptations and functions of the startups inside.

A strong driver was the need for collaboration and interaction between individual startups and with each other, in addition to privacy for each startup to operate as its own business.

With this in mind, we created open spaces and breakout areas, and smaller, private meeting rooms.

Sustainability was also an important factor in the design of the Incubator, so the building explores principles of passive environmental control, such as operable wall panels to facilitate natural ventilation through the interior, cantilevering roofs to shade the double-glazed windows from excessive solar radiation, electricity generating solar panels on the roof and a monitoring system that provides feedback on the building’s use of energy.

The rainwater runoff from the roof is also reticulated through the surrounding landscape for irrigation.

The Incubator is a dramatic demonstration that Macquarie University is facilitating societal advancement through partnerships, through research, through invention and through high quality architectural design.