The Caroline Chisholm Centre is the headquarters of the Commonwealth Department of Human Services, providing 45,000sqm of office accommodation for 2500 staff. The central feature of the building is its ‘main street’ which connects the main office areas surrounding it. Centrelink required the office floors and the office fitout to be highly flexible. That flexibility is achieved by large clear floor plates with full raised access floors for cable reticulation.

A central concept of the building design is to locate most fixed common elements, such as conference rooms, 100-seat theatre, amphitheatre, café, kiosk and gymnasium, in the ‘main street’ away from the flexible offices. Centralising conference room locations means that these expensive facilities are more efficiently utilised. The fitout colour scheme embraces the local environment of the Brindabella mountain range with a ‘forest, mountain, sky’ design philosophy adopted for the internal and external colour schemes as well as for the internal way-finding principles within the office environment.