Works have commenced on the $206 million Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery (ACMD) at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne in Fitzroy.
The 11-storey facility will be built within the existing footprint of the hospital’s Aikenhead Wing after it was approved by the Victorian state government and issued a building permit by the Yarra City Council earlier this year.
Designed by Denton Corker Marshall in association with L2D Architects, the ACMD will be the country’s first collaborative hospital-based biomedical engineering research centre in Australia.
The current Aikenhead building on the corner of Nicholson Street and Victoria Parade is currently in the process of being demolished to make way for the new 16,500-square-metre centre, on which construction is expected to begin in January 2023.
The ACMD will include 3D printing laboratories, a kinetics lab and rooms for sensitive hearing and vision technologies.
Image: Denton Corker Marshall
Scheduled for completion in late 2024, the new building’s capacities will include 3D-printing laboratories, a human kinetics lab, special insulated rooms for the development of hearing and vision technologies, engineering workshops for developing medical prototypes, and more.
An education hub will be embedded within the new centre, delivering dedicated teaching facilities as well as seminar and tutorial spaces, a clinical simulation laboratory and a lecture theatre.
ACMD chief executive Dr Erol Harvey said the focus of the new centre will be on prevention, early intervention, robotic, digital and data engineering, to improve equitable access to healthcare services.
The new centre is a collaboration of nine partner groups including St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne, St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research, Bionics Institute, the Centre for Eye Research Australia, University of Melbourne, RMIT University, Swinburne University of Technology, Australian Catholic University and the University of Wollongong Australia.
