Our Facilities - The Geoscience Australia Building

• Introduction
• The design

• Geothermal Heat Pump 10 Year Review [PDF 210kb]
• An environmentally friendly workplace
• Picture gallery
• Offshore Petroleum Acreage Release Data Room

Introduction

The Geoscience Australia Building is a purpose built geoscientific research facility situated in the Canberra suburb of Symonston. The building project was funded by the Commonwealth Government and was completed in December 1997, with Geoscience Australia occupying the building from January 1998. The building was sold by the Commonwealth in 2000 and Geoscience Australia has a 20 year lease.

Geoscience Australia building at Symonston

The site consists of two buildings. The main building provides for general office, open plan and layout space; laboratories (including geochronology, chromatography, palaeontology, microbiology, isotope and mass spectrometry laboratories); and public access to the foyer and reception, showcasing Geoscience Australia activities. There is also public access to the Library, Sales Centre, Education Centre and Cafe. The support building has special purpose storage facilities for the organisations vast collection of scientific data, rock/mineral and core samples. It also consists of workshops supporting field activities, cool rooms and heavy acid laboratories and rock crushing activities.

Approximately 17 000 cubic metres of concrete and 1200 tonnes of structural steel were used in the construction of the two buildings which total about 40 000 square metres.

Entry to the Geoscience Australia building

The main building is a conventional concrete structure clad with a variety of materials, including metal panels, glass, and precast and off-form concrete. It has a curved metal deck roof featuring skylights and cowls to maximise the level of natural light within the building.

Support building

The support building is a concrete slab on ground construction with structural steel framing, cement sheet, aluminium frame glazing and lightweight concrete panels.

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The Design

The design brief for the new Geoscience Australia building sought to achieve the following outcomes:

• to co-locate and integrate the disparate elements of the organisation;
• to enhance the client focus and service of Geoscience Australia;
• to provide a building that is efficient and functional for the life of the building;
• to provide a building that is flexible and adaptable to the changing needs of Geoscience Australia;
• as part of the Australian Government Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism (RET), to demonstrate an appropriate pragmatic response to Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) design principles given that RET has carriage of the Government's energy policies and Geoscience Australia's mission is to encourage economically and environmentally sustainable management of Australia's minerals, energy, soil and water resources.

Library courtyard

Geoscience Australia's architects, Eggleston Macdonald (now DesignInc), designed a building which show-cases a significant number of ESD design features whilst maintaining a sound balance with cost efficiency and functionality. This is attributed to the following design principles:

• a compact, well insulated building envelope - all windows are double glazed and substantial thermal insulation has been included in the roof and the walls;
• orientation of buildings on an east-west axis with north-south orientation for primary facades minimizing exposure to solar gains;
• low ratio of external wall to gross floor area minimizes the impact of external thermal conditions on the total air conditioning systems;
• a passive sun-control system which minimizes solar heat loads through all seasons;
• incorporation of light shelves on the north facade to increase uniformity and penetration of daylight into the work-place;
• efficient lighting systems with controls to enable the daylight component to be reflected in energy savings in electrical lighting;
• all penetrations to the building fabric well sealed to prevent drafts and incorporate thermal breaks to prevent transfer of heat and cold across non-insulated surfaces; airlocks are also provided to all main entrances;
• the building being monitored by a computerized building management system (BMS);
• air conditioning incorporating a geothermal heat pump system which consists of 210 individual packaged units throughout the building and a ground loop system of 350 pipes in the ground to use the earth as a heat sink or heat source at different times of the year. The geothermal air conditioning system provides significant energy savings from equipment, lighting and air conditioning as well as allowing the system to be operated only when an area of the building is occupied.

Geothermal heat pump

The geothermal heat pump system offers the following advantages:

• reduced energy requirement;
• lower capital cost;
• reduced peak energy demand;
• reduced annual energy consumption;
• greater 'after-hours' flexibility.