The South Australian Health and Medical Institute (SAHMRI) has been shortlisted at the 2014 INSIDE World Festival of Interiors Awards. The awards this year attracted entries from twenty-eight countries across nine categories.

Dortek fitted hygienic door systems at the new research facility in 2012. The SAHMRI by Woods Bagot is the first building in Adelaide’s North Terrace Health Precinct. Beyond its parametrically designed facade and swirling stairs and atria, the new research facility is set to transform the city — and research outcomes — with its sustainable design.

Adelaide has the potential to be a living laboratory for experiments in green urbanism. There are many examples of sustainable design in the Adelaide city centre and the latest of these is the SAHMRI Medical Research Building. Is it a spaceship piloted by a friendly alien, a metallic pine cone or a giant cheese-grater?

SAHMRI stands for South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute and its building on North Terrace is not designed to blend into the Adelaide skyline – it’s a floating object. The building is lifted, creating a partially open ground plane in an integrated landscape, opening the building to the public as well as users, allowing for greater activation and porosity through the site. The 25,000 square metre facility is located adjacent to the new Royal Adelaide Hospital, sharing its forecourt entry.

The institute will conduct collaborative interdisciplinary research with South Australia’s three universities and the new Royal Adelaide Hospital, and is the first stage of a new health and bio-medical precinct.