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Wongaburra Garden
Settlement

64 Bed Residential Aged Care Community

CLIENT

Wongaburra Society

LOCATION

Beaudesert, QLD

VALUE

$12M

COMPLETED

2007

Wongaburra Garden Settlement is a 64 bed aged care development that enables the elderly to remain connected to their local community, residing in a safe facility that references the character of their familiar rural setting.

PEOPLE

Paul Sekava
(Project Contact)

Diana Azzereuo
Nathan Hildebrandt
Cherrissa McCaughey

Joanne Tenorio
Paul Trotter (L)

The aged care community was developed through the ideas, commitment and generosity of local population of Beaudesert, a rural town in South East Queensland. Fulton Trotter Architects partnered with the community-based Wongaburra Society to design and deliver the development.

The challenge of this project was to design a facility that was comfortable and relevant for ageing residents in a rural community. The fragmented planning arrangement was driven by the client’s brief for a small scale, domestic environment, as well as the need to minimise their recurrent staffing costs. The 11 buildings that make up the facility are designed to reflect the architectural forms of the clusters of farm buildings that ‘dot’ the surrounding hills.

The visual scale of the development is reduced by breaking up the mass of a traditional aged care facility into a series of individual, linked buildings which have their own colour and material palette. The smaller resident ‘house’ groups also enabled staff numbers to be minimised without compromising care.

As well as 8 bedroom wings, there are 2 communal living and dining buildings and a central community building with a café, hairdresser and physiotherapy clinic. The sprawling plan creates secure resident internal courtyards, as well as creating opportunities for physical and visual connection the external landscape.

Photographer: © Scott Burrows  |  Elevation: © Fulton Trotter Architects

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