Australian Wildlife Health Centre Gallery Upgrade
A holistic experience-first redesign of Healesville Animal Sanctuary’s on-site hospital gallery, including interior architecture, graphic design and a suite of custom interactives.
Sandpit collaborated with the vets and broader Sanctuary team to envision a comprehensive transformation of their visitor gallery that blended physical and digital design seamlessly. It was our goal to usher in a new era for the hospital and support their incredible work. Guided by the design principle of ‘rewilding the space’ and prioritising the specific needs of a working hospital, Sandpit overhauled everything the visitor sees, including the creation of over a dozen brand new digital interactive experiences.
Sandpit worked with Heliotope Architecture and Nick Lewis Design to create a beautiful, organic, and welcoming environment that will support the hospital and its visitors for many years to come. The space is enriched with colour, narrative, and scientific detail, giving visitors incredible insights into the stories of the hospital and the Sanctuary more broadly.
After working with the hospital team intensively to understand their goals and needs for the space, we designed a suite of hands-on interactives. These range in scale and function, including giving visitors the opportunity to examine microscopic organisms, understand veterinary diagnosis, find out what’s happening to animals in the exam rooms in real time, and witness the incredible moment when a healed animal is re-released back into the wild.
The hospital redesign includes a huge range of technologies including transparent OLED screens so as not to block sightlines in the exam room, rear projection on switch glass in post-mortem to provide privacy when necessary, and a live feed of the back-of house veterinarian’s whiteboard to allow visitors an up-to-the-moment understanding of which animals are in treatment each day.
Sandpit were honoured to have the opportunity to work with the Australian Wildlife Health Centre (AWHC) and support the healing and conservation work they do. Every single piece of the enormous puzzle of this project was carefully considered to create a space that is inviting, story-rich, and highly functional to ensure that the AWHC can continue their life-changing work for generations to come.
