The CSIRO Discovery Centre project comprises research laboratories, a conference centre, retail areas, an exhibition hall, bank, cafeteria, and a science education centre called the Green Machine.

A centrally located greenhouse atrium gives the building an introspective winter garden configuration and a focus for public activities. The public, looking from the atrium, can see the scientists at work from the middle level, which provides a vantage point similar to the bridge on a ship.

The other edge of the block includes the conference centre, the cafeteria and the communications exchange. This enclosure is shaped as a sharply clad element, fragmented, teased out and expanded, with balcony antennae stretched out to meet the landscape.

This is the opposite of the controlled but open laboratory grid. The naturally ventilated central greenhouse is visually open to the sky, one face looking towards the city, the other to the bush and the mountains behind Canberra.