Wongaburra Garden
Settlement

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.