The Woodside Building for Technology and Design is a landmark, state of the art technology and education design building to accommodate the faculties of Engineering and Information Technology at the Monash University’s Clayton Campus.
The building hosts 750 staff and students, divided in 5 levels, and is currently the largest Passivhaus Building in the Southern Hemisphere.
The 23,000m2 five story building is conceived as a modular steel framed armature ordered into tartan geometry of three linear elements spanning 12m for the ‘design build studios’ and co-lab spaces, 24m for flat floor and tiered learning spaces below and the academic and research above, and 6m for the informal collaboration. The lower three levels accommodate 30 different modular learning spaces of varying dimensions enabling an array of visually and spatially interconnected volumes that are orientated to sunlight and views, further activating the landscaped public realm of the campus.
The building has been designed as a “living laboratory”: the passive design strategy shapes the architecture to showcase the performance-based approach and to provide unique learning opportunities.

Photography: Rory Gardiner and Michael Kai