RSPCA Animal Care Centre, SA

The new Animal Care Campus at Ityamaiitpinna Yarta (Glenthorne National Park) demonstrates RSPCA’s commitment to worlds best practice animal care standards whilst creating a vibrant community destination hub. It offers a broad array of animal care and welfare education, training programs, volunteer and allied welfare support spaces, as well as fostering and adoption services.

As RSPCA are a registered charity reliant largely on donations the construction of such a large and complex campus had to be done under strict budget control. A modular steel portal frame, recurring across several of the buildings combined with the repeated gable end architectural form provided a very efficient building typology. The creases in the roofline de-industrialises the building forms and reduces the built scale or the development.

The complex and diverse brief required a broad array of animal care facilities. This is best demonstrated in the Animal Care Centre. A highly innovative, state of the art veterinary centre which simultaneously handles the needs of domestic and wildlife species in separate wings with a shared theatre zone. These wings give the RSPCA flexibility to quickly adapt during disasters such as bushfire and swing both wings into wildlife care, a key recommendation to come out of the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements.

The new campus has a focus on creating opportunities for public education and training spaces. Inviting the public to participate in a range of activities in order to provide preventative animal welfare services and minimise the number of animals coming into their care.