The magnetic pulling power of Australia’s capital cities has affected virtually all of Australia’s regional cities, so it is wonderful to see the Bendigo Bank – which has done so much to sustain regional banking – staying loyal to its origins, and reinforcing the community and sense of place that is the city of Bendigo.

Bendigo, along with Ballarat, is the most overt expression of the wealth that flowed from the 1850s Victorian gold rushes. Located 157 kilometres north west of Melbourne, Bendigo’s central thoroughfare is grandly titled Pall Mall, and is lined with monumental High Victorian buildings, their richly encrusted cement facades borrowing freely from Roman, Renaissance and French sources, all ‘befitting the great quartzopolis’.

Given the scale and endeavour of the new Bendigo Bank Headquarters, by BVN Architecture and Gray Puksand, an initial concern was its impact o this 19th century townscape. The city’s key intersection at the Alexandra Fountain is fronted by an understate building long-owned by the bank, with a modest plaza to the side as the entrance to the new six-level facility.

Escalators set beneath a sloping glass canopy ease the visitor to reception at a mid level. In this vicinity public interface occurs, and there are spacious ‘meeting and greeting’ areas and various interview and conference rooms which are outside the secure workplace. The latter, once entered, has slightly random planning, giving a sense of grouped pockets of activity. All occur along a central pedestrian spine – over four floors with open connecting stairs – that links the various work bases. These are separated by top-lit atriums that house meeting and communal areas. Here, there are coffee bars and plenty of informal meeting options, with glazed conference ‘cabins’ sheltered by slatted canopies enabling discussions of a more private nature. Lofty canted ceilings of gleaming ‘ripple-iron’ deflect light into the angular voids, which are articulated by bridges and edged by break-out spaces.

At the end of the plan, a glazed wall further secures the bank’s treasury area. As on the exterior, hearty coloured accents avoid the sterility so typical of modern interiors. Every space enjoys an elevated outlook over the city and several of the atriums open onto landscaped terraces providing a chance to relax in the open air.

The building, built in two stages, brings together over 1,000 staff who were formerly housed in five different locations, and ensures a more effective enterprise, a kind of low-rise campus, large, but broken into manageable components.

Externally, the building is an articulated glazed volume, given abstract expression by different coloured panels. On the western elevation these panels project as perforated screens, providing relief from the western sun. Amongst the coloured panels there is an emphasis on terracotta and red shades, suitably contextual amongst the red brick that provides the basic building blocks of Bendigo. From the Catholic Cathedral’s hilltops, the new building crests the historic rooftops, like some imposing cruise liner berthed in the old drainage channel.

A set of pedestrian arcades traverse the site, and the considered scale of the new building – especially its active eastern street frontage  to Bath Lane – has given new character and vitality to this shopping precinct.

A superior office environment is achieved through filtered daylight and air-conditioning, the latter with a high, fresh air component. Rainwater and grey water is stored for re-use, and blackwater is processed. Many sustainable initiatives are evident, partly the result of an innovation grant from Sustainability Victoria, and also the bank’s own wish to be a community leader.

For this visitor the entry plaza’s angled glass canopy, sheltering the main access point and its escalators, is an element unrelated to the colourful, playful rectangular accents found everywhere else in the building. Nearby a vast expanse of boardwalk obscures a remarkable historic floodway. But these are minor matters in an important outcome for one of Australia’s few inland cities.

The building received an Australian Institute of Australia Architects National Award for Commercial Architecture which recognized its role in the evolution of large-scale office planning, sustainable design, and its contribution to an important urban context.

Howard Tanner of Tanner Architects in Sydney, visited the Bendigo Bank Headquarters as a jury member for the 2009 National Architecture Awards.

The Bendigo Bank Headquarters won the Victorian Institute of Architects Regional Prize, the Victorian Institute of Architects Commercial Architecture Award and a High Commendation in the Property Council of Australia Innovation & Excellence Awards, and was shortlisted for the World Architecture Award in Barcelona in 2009.