Koala Village: A Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre That Lifts Itself Off the Forest Floor

Most rehabilitation facilities are built for the people who run them, with the animals fitted in afterwards. Koala Village reverses that order. It starts from the premise that the forest itself is the koala's infrastructure, supplying food, shelter, security and survival, and then asks how architecture can recreate that condition for animals recovering from habitat loss and wildfire. The result is not a single institutional block but a cluster of raised timber volumes that behave more like trees in a grove than rooms in a building.

Designed by Maria Datculescu, the project received the People's Choice Award in Haven 2020, a competition centred on architecture that shelters vulnerable species. Datculescu's proposal combines rehabilitation, conservation, education and community engagement on a sloping, forested site, and it treats the boundaries between those activities as carefully as the buildings themselves.

A Grove of Timber Volumes Instead of a Single Building

The aerial view makes the strategy immediately legible: timber-clad volumes gather loosely beside a curving elevated boardwalk, with eucalyptus and hazy mountains beyond. Nothing reads as a dominant mass. The modular composition borrows the scattered organisation of a natural ecosystem, so the facility settles into the terrain as a village rather than imposing a single footprint on it.

At eye level, the vertical cladding and slender columns echo the rhythm of trunks, and visitors on the dirt path pass beneath the pavilions rather than through them. This matters for the animals. A layered, tree-like environment offers recovering koalas a familiar and low-stress setting, while the elevated volumes and pathways keep human movement legible and contained, preserving the koalas' freedom of movement.

Following the Contours Rather Than Cutting Into Them

Datculescu refuses the usual move of flattening a slope into a platform. Each flat-roofed volume is positioned individually along the hillside and lifted on pilotis, so the ground beneath continues uninterrupted and extensive excavation is avoided. The rendering shows small figures at the entrance and a glazed block behind, a scale comparison that reveals how lightly the structures touch down.

The payoff is both ecological and visual. Leaving the topography intact protects the forest floor the project exists to restore, and it allows the buildings to appear as though they have emerged from the landscape rather than been placed on top of it.

Three Zones, One Protected Heart

The ground-level plan clarifies the programme. The facility is divided into three primary zones: a rehabilitation centre, a visitor centre, and staff accommodation. The rehabilitation court sits at the centre, with the visitor centre set apart, while the hillside elevation strip above the plan shows how the modules step with the land.

Separating functions this way is the project's most practical decision. Visitors learn about the threats facing koalas through exhibition spaces, educational displays and observation areas, yet they do so without entering the spaces where injured animals are treated and observed. Education and recovery share a site without sharing a threshold.

Courtyards That Keep Recovery Connected to the Forest

The rehabilitation centre is organised around large internal courtyards, and this view captures their character: a birch tree rises through an open court while a raised timber volume hovers on columns above. Below, interior views of a spiral stair and a lounge suggest a warm, domestic register for the human side of the operation.

The courtyard is where the concept becomes tangible. Controlled environments give carers the safety they need for treatment, yet the trees and open sky maintain a strong visual and physical connection to nature. Healing does not happen in a sealed clinical box; it happens within a fragment of the forest the animals will eventually return to.

Why This Project Matters

Koala Village shows that conservation architecture can be measured by what it leaves undisturbed. By lifting its volumes off the ground, following the contours, and dispersing its programme across the site, the project keeps the forest working as habitat while still delivering a functioning clinic, an educational destination and a place for staff to live.

Its People's Choice recognition reflects an idea that is easy to grasp and hard to execute: design for the animal first, then for the visitor. As wildfire and habitat loss reshape ecosystems, proposals like Datculescu's make a persuasive case that the most useful buildings for wildlife may be the ones that most closely resemble the landscape they are trying to protect.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designer: Maria Datculescu

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Project credits: Koala Village by Maria Datculescu Haven 2020 (uni.xyz).