Winner of the Horbury Hunt Commercial Award – Think Brick Awards 2025

“This building takes a really complex technical brief into a harsh environment in this section of the university, and creates a really special moment for the campus and the students.” ~ Awards Jury 2025

The winners of the 2025 Think Brick Awards have been announced, celebrating architects that demonstrated Continuity through innovative and thoughtful use of bricks, blocks, pavers, and roof tiles. We are thrilled to have received the Horbury Hunt Commercial Category for The University of Queensland Plant Futures Facility building.

Functionally, the Plant Futures Facility is a container for plants and their research conditions, accommodating an array of highly technical, controlled environments. The concept embraces the project’s typology by defining the building as a “walled garden”. The wall is then given context with nine different bricks, each one similar to a brick found in the array of neighbouring buildings.  The brick detailing and forms also reference the local context. The brickwork steps around in large-scale pixels, the pattern reflecting the cross section of Queensland’s geological profile. This is a highly technical, flexible, research facility that is contextual terms is of its place.