Tony MillerPre-drilled boards attached with countersunk stainless steel screws hang at a 25-degree angle from the vertical axis clad the center’s roughly 6,000 square feet of façade.
Bold, original, and non-institutional were the objectives behind the Billard Leece Partnership’s design of the 17,200-square-foot Nexus Wallan GP SuperClinic in Australia’s Wallan township.
For the clinic’s raked glue-laminated (glulam) timber fins and cladding, the Melbourne-based firm selected white cypress, a native species favored for its durability and natural resistance to pests.
Australia’s building codes mandate that 80 percent of a structure’s north, south, and east façades are shaded at the height of solar exposure. The fins’ dimensions were tweaked to maximize shading and minimize heat-load. Final lengths range from 20 feet to 31 feet; depths vary between 11.8 inches and 23.6 inches.
“At the end of the day,” says project architect Daniel Rafter, “we were able to exceed the requirements by working with the achievable depths available in the glue-laminated products.”
Tony MillerThe seams and butt joints of the shiplap boards are tongue-and-groove for a snug fit, which contributes to reduced material waste and installation time.
Tony MillerThe depth of the timber fins increased in areas of fenestration to provide additional shading. The designers also added a perforated metal screen between the timber fins at the window head on the north façade, where the exposure is at its greatest.
Freelance
journalist Logan Ward has written about architecture, design, and innovation
for The Atlantic, Smithsonian, Garden & Gun, Preservation, Popular
Mechanics, and many other magazines. Ward is the author of See You in a
Hundred Years, the true account of the year his family traded digital-age
technology for the tools of his great-grandparents’ era.
Artificial intelligence is not just reshaping how we manage indoor climates—it’s creating new opportunities for architects to merge aesthetics, sustainability, and efficiency.