With its striking visual façade, the 1010 LaTrobe Street building encapsulates the very spirit of innovation that the Digital Harbour precinct aims to harness. But it's also the cutting edge internal design that helps create a truly unique and distinctive building.

From an architectural perspective, the 1010 LaTrobe Street building on La Trobe Street at Digital Harbour completely embodies the digital age.

Externally, the building's striking façade references many of the themes and visual codes of our technological era. Offset precast concrete panels and solar glazed curtain walling allude to the visual language of circuit boards, bar codes, morse codes and binary numerals.

Internally, 1010 LaTrobe Street encapsulates the spirit of contemporary workplace culture. On a large footprint of 2,000 + square metres, the building is designed around flexibility and functionality, using open-planned spaces to facilitate easy technology upgrades, rapid space reconfiguration and to enhance cross-pollenation of ideas between tenants.

Award winning architects Ashton Raggatt McDougall, who developed the overall urban design plan for Digital Harbour, are continuing the vision for the precinct in every facet of 1010. LaTrobe Street.

"Digital Harbour is designed to encourage informal interaction and collaboration, fostering a dynamic community that develops new ideas while crossing traditional boundaries," says Howard Raggatt, Design Architect. "The precinct comprises active facades that employ cutting edge building technologies. The vision we have for Digital Harbour is to create much more than a place to anchor in the digital world."

For example, the on-off perimeter wall system allows maximum flexibility of fit-out. And the building adopts a new approach for technology savvy companies, incorporating 3.6 metre high ceilings, exposed cable trays and services that make reconfiguring of spaces and upgrading of technology a relatively simple matter that can be done over a weekend.

1010 LaTrobe Street also benefits from a generous foyer that is anchored by a ground floor café – encouraging 'time out' to socialise and get to know other tenants. 1010 LaTrobe Street provides an environment that nurtures research and commercial development of innovative ideas.

The adjacent Innovation Building boasts an exhibition zone and multimedia auditorium catering to the specific commercial and technological needs of Digital Harbour's tenants – seating up to 150.

Digital Harbour Executive Director, David Napier, says the overall design plan for the precinct is not just to have buildings side by side but to have an integrated and interconnected precinct.

"Things like laneways and interfaces between the buildings, landscaped public spaces, combined with outdoor cafes and seating zones. We are changing the way that people who occupy the buildings work and play. It's about taking into account the way people move in and around the precinct in the longer term."

The orientation of 1010 LaTrobe Street allows maximum energy efficiency, incorporating glazed curtain walls used to increase ambient light, and solar water heating systems. To minimise the environmental impact, the building has been constructed of materials with low toxicity and low embodied energy. Significantly, 1010 LaTrobe Street incorporates a closed loop black water treatment system to recycle all waste water.

"The precinct has been designed around achieving better energy ratings through better amenities internally and externally – everything from cyclist facilities to the use of native trees and water and energy conservation measures," says Digital Harbour Director Russell Nisbet. "The Innovation Building created a green benchmark for commercial buildings in the Docklands area and we've now lifted the bar again with 1010 LaTrobe Street 10."

Ashton Raggatt McDougall Project Architect, Jesse Judd, adds: "The overall design and construction process for 1010 LaTrobe Street has been remarkably smooth. There has been a clear focus on reducing energy demands. The primary design challenge was the orientation of the building towards the west, which required us to employ a double-glazed solar controlled curtain wall."

"On the rest of the façade our approach was to add thermal mass, using an alternating precast concrete panel system and glazed curtain wall. It creates that unique optical illusion on the outside of the building known as the Munsterberg Effect, which not only looks impressive but functionally has achieved the desired results."