The Borobi Sanctuary: A Koala Rehabilitation Loop That Turns Wildlife Care Into a Public Journey

Most animal rescue facilities are designed to be invisible: the clinical work happens behind walls, and the public sees only the healthy end of the story. The Borobi Sanctuary does the opposite. It takes the full sequence of koala rehabilitation, from diagnosis to recovery, and lays it out as a single walkable loop. Care becomes something visitors move through rather than something hidden from them, and the project's central argument follows from that choice: an enclosure does not have to be a wall.

Designed by Edwin Ho and Chin Jovi, the project was shortlisted in Haven 2020. It responds to the ongoing crisis facing Australia's koalas with a combined rehabilitation and education center set within bushfire-prone bushland. Instead of clearing a site for a compound, the designers organise the masterplan around a central koala sanctuary, protect existing trees and biodiversity corridors, and raise much of the building off the ground so the landscape keeps working underneath it.

A Closed Loop Wrapped Around a Protected Void

The exploded axonometric explains the scheme better than any single view. Black steel frames, timber floors, concrete slabs and a curved boardwalk separate into stacked layers, and all of them orbit a central void. That void is the koala sanctuary, the ecological and symbolic heart of the plan. Everything else, from clinical spaces to public walkways, is arranged around it rather than on top of it.

The circular path matters because it solves two problems at once. It gives visitors a continuous journey with changing viewpoints toward the bush, and it keeps human movement on a defined ring that limits interference with habitat. The loop is closed, so the public sees the stages of rehabilitation in sequence while staff retain clear boundaries between public and private zones. It is a planning diagram that does curatorial work.

The Operating Theatre as Part of the Itinerary

The operation floor plan and section make the project's boldest move legible. The laboratory, diagnosis room and operational space sit directly beside a courtyard, with visitors and birds drawn overhead in section. The clinical heart of the sanctuary is not tucked into a back-of-house wing; it is placed along the route, where the work of saving injured and displaced koalas can be understood firsthand.

This is where the reinterpretation of enclosure becomes concrete. Physical and visual barriers are softened so that visitors, staff, wildlife and landscape share an experience, yet the section still holds people at a level and distance that protects sensitive rehabilitation areas. Transparency here is calibrated rather than total, which is exactly what a working wildlife hospital requires.

A Skeletal Steel Frame That Barely Touches the Ground

The collage rendering shows the architectural language at its clearest: a steel-framed timber pavilion beside the boardwalk, with koalas on rocks and eucalyptus trees close at hand. The structure is exposed and skeletal, lifted on stilts so that the building touches the ground lightly. Nature continues uninterrupted beneath the architecture, and the elevated walkways give visitors an unusual vantage point while keeping a safe separation from the animals.

Inside, the mood shifts. Rough-cast concrete columns rise above a mesh staircase, and timber-lined rooms flank the space with people seated on either side. The mesh lets light and views pass through the circulation, while the heavier concrete anchors the interior. It is a useful reminder that the lightness of the scheme is not uniform; the designers deploy mass where it supports occupation and keep the frame open where it meets the landscape.

Timber, Sandstone and Steel for a Landscape That Burns

Because the site sits in a bushfire-prone region, material choice is a question of resilience as much as character. The rendering of stacked timber-framed enclosures with glazed openings, fronted by a sandstone wall, shows how the designers balance these demands. Timber brings warmth and blends with the surrounding bushland, steel provides structural efficiency and longevity, and the sandstone wall adds a grounded, durable edge at the threshold where keepers and koalas meet.

The final view distils the project into a single frame: a black steel portal with a timber surround straddles the curved boardwalk, and koalas, a ranger and visitors share the same field of grasses. The portal reads less as a gate than as a marker along the route, framing the bush rather than closing it off. It is a small element that captures the whole ambition, an architecture that announces a threshold without building a barrier.

Why This Project Matters

The Borobi Sanctuary treats conservation as a spatial sequence rather than a programme hidden inside a box. By placing laboratories and diagnosis rooms along a public loop, it turns rehabilitation into education and builds empathy through proximity. That shift, from spectacle to understanding, is what distinguishes it from the conventional model of a rescue facility or wildlife attraction.

Just as important is its restraint on the ground. Elevating a skeletal frame on stilts, protecting existing trees and corridors, and wrapping the plan around a preserved sanctuary all point to architecture acting as a facilitator of ecological recovery rather than a dominant intervention. For a continent where bushfires and habitat loss keep reshaping the landscape, Ho and Jovi offer a clear proposition: the best enclosure may be the one that lets the bush keep growing beneath it.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designers: Edwin Ho, Chin Jovi

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Project credits: The Borobi Sanctuary by Edwin Ho, Chin Jovi Haven 2020 (uni.xyz).