The INSPIRE Centre (short for Innovative Sustainable Practical Interactive Research in Education) is a high level education and professional development facility that focuses on teacher professional development in state of the art educational ICT. Designed to showcase the facility at work, the interior space of the INSPIRE Centre is elegant but raw, revealing three clear functional spaces: the TEAL room, the main studio spaces and amenity spaces, and a large flexible collaboration space between the two.

Its presence provides a ‘hard-urban edge’ to the pedestrian boulevard that runs perpendicular to the concourse, and features local recycled ironbark timber cladding both internally and externally to the TEAL room, and exposed pre-cast concrete walls that provide an industrial feel to the ingenious spaces.

Manteena successfully overcame many challenges throughout construction, one of which was the coordination of the structural steel and precast, which tie into one another. Several sections of precast support structural steel, while several areas of structural steel support precast panels.

Other innovative features include: • Advanced fully integrated AV system, which also dims the lights and controls the blinds. A significant amount of work was required to program the C-Bus controls for lighting and blinds. A presentation in one room can be displayed throughout all other AV systems in the building. • The locker pod from Planex was designed and constructed specifically for the project and has since gone into commercial production. • The podcast. A fully acoustically treated space with 3 layers of SoundchekTM each side of the wall, decoupled studs and acoustic insulation. Removable panels in the podcast, with acoustic insulation behind, will enable users to ‘tune’ the room by making a wall sound absorbent or reflective. • The ‘Toguna’ and ‘Idea Walls’ from Bene are Australian first installations. Several walls throughout the building are Class 5 finish painted in writable idea paint.