An eye clinic that looks back at you.
What began as a feasibility study for a former security premises on Wellington Street became a full architectural commission - a two-storey mixed-use building housing a specialist eye clinic on the first floor with leasable commercial space below. The site sits within Launceston's emerging health precinct, downhill from the General Hospital and the Launceston Health Hub, and the design needed to read as part of that evolving streetscape while holding its own on a prominent corner at the intersection of Wellington and Cleveland Streets.
The building pushes to its boundaries to maximise usable floor area across both levels, with ground-floor car parking resolving a steep site that falls across multiple split levels. A western orientation presented a genuine challenge - expansive glazing on that facade would invite solar heat gain and road noise - so the environmental response became the defining architectural move.
Shade as identity.
A profiled screening system wraps the building's facade, managing solar gain and acoustic exposure while giving the clinic a distinctive street presence. Cut into the screen is an image of a single eye, gazing outward rather than directly at the viewer - a detail developed with the client that turns a functional shading element into something quietly memorable. From a distance, the louvre effect reads as a textured, contemporary facade consistent with the health precinct around it. Up close, the eye reveals itself. It is the kind of detail that earns a second look, which feels fitting for an eye clinic.
The building maintains the scale and bulk of its Wellington Street neighbours - two-storey, built to the frontage boundary, consistent with the established streetscape pattern. Planters along the rear boundary provide separation between pedestrians and vehicles, and the site's proximity to the traffic-controlled intersection at Cleveland Street allows safe egress from the lower car park. From feasibility to completion, the project evolved from a question about what the site could support into a building that contributes to the character of a precinct still finding its identity.
