Project Name: Alba Thermal Springs and Spa

Location: Fingal, Victoria, Australia

Design Team: Hayball

Total Floor Area: 150,000 m²

Completion: 2022

Photography: Willem-Dirk Du Toit

Feature:

Project - Situated on a 15-hectare site on the Mornington Peninsula, the Alba Thermal Springs and Spa designed by Hayball presents an innovative paradigm for landscape-integrated architectural design. This world-class wellness destination completed in 2022 transforms a former green wedge site into an immersive bathing and wellness retreat, integrating 32 geothermal pools, water features, and spa buildings that are artfully nestled into the tertiary dune landscape.

The project's most compelling design achievement lies in its semi-subterranean architectural strategy. Rather than simply placing a standalone building on the site, the architects created a design concept that merges with the terrain, with the main structure partially embedded into the hilltop, creating a dramatic effect where the architecture appears to vanish and reemerge from the landscape. This design philosophy unfolds through a carefully choreographed arrival experience, creating suspense and anticipation for visitors while reinforcing the transformative qualities of the wellness destination.

The architectural narrative develops through the pure formal language of curved concrete walls. These walls, rendered in raw concrete finishes with ribbed textures, cut through the terrain to create sunken courtyards that channel natural light deep into the interiors. Bronze glass and metallic finishes add an element of robustness to the architecture while maintaining a modest presence among the natural surroundings. The curved walls not only delineate spaces but also curate rich spatial experiences through the interplay of light and shadow.

The facility accommodates up to 400 guests and features 35 thoughtfully positioned pools, including salt baths, geothermal pools, cold plunge pools, and herbal-infused pools. The semi-subterranean entry level hosts reception areas, change rooms, and administration spaces. The upper level features 21 exclusive spa treatment rooms equipped with dry saunas, steam rooms, Vichy showers, and single or double massage rooms. The restaurant, positioned level with the surrounding landscape, offers a selection of healthy dining choices to nourish the body, focusing on local and seasonal produce. A large roof terrace shared between the restaurant and spa treatment area is thoughtfully designed to capture panoramic vistas from every vantage point atop the main building.

The interior design continues the minimalist aesthetic. Simple forms and circular motifs are adopted throughout, articulated through curved walls, rounded windows, and large skylights that punctuate the space to illuminate the interior environment. A spiral staircase rises from a reflective indoor pool as both a sculptural element and a mechanism to delineate public and private spaces, celebrating the ritualistic nature of the arrival process.

Raw materiality is expressed through a feature wall clad in handmade Spanish brick tiles, concrete pillars, and flooring that are softened by touches of timber paneling. Elements of the native landscape such as Bottlebrush seed pods, Eucalyptus gum nuts, and seashells are referenced in the relaxation lounges and spa treatment rooms. The use of natural, tactile materials and tonal color palettes strengthens the indoor-outdoor connection.

Distributed along a meandering stone path, the bathing experience at Alba sees all pools forming a family of simple geometries, enabling intuitive wayfinding, dispersed circulation, and equitable bathing experiences while ensuring operational efficiency and material reliability. Though simple in form and precise in detail, each pool curates a unique experience through its conscious siting, interaction with topography, landscape views, planting, seasonal changes, and microclimate relationships. In the rolling dunes, intimate circular pools perch over the golden tips of coastal spear grass as it sways together with clouds of saltbush. Around the largest dune, pools sit flush around a central water feature, its flow programmed to mimic the tides while its geology suggests an exposed permanence under eons of shifting sand. Formal botanical pools are hidden in gullies of tea-tree scrub, with dappled shadows playing on straight lines of warm stone. On ridges, shallow pools lie low for reclining, submerging the full body out of the wind, with comfortable curved coping for staring upward at clouds whipping from ocean to bay.

Alba Thermal Springs and Spa presents itself as a world-class wellness destination and a unity of architecture, landscape, and environment. The holistic approach grasps the environmental complexities of the site and captures the fleeting qualities of nature for a recalibrating sensory experience.

Design Team - Established in 1983 by founder Len Hayball, Hayball has emerged as a leading national architectural practice in Australia, building a distinguished reputation over more than 40 years with a strong focus on culture, community, and learning. Operating from studios in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and Canberra, the firm has evolved into an architectural force with distinctive insights into social value, environmental sustainability, and community wellbeing.

Hayball's practice is built upon the core principle set by its founder that there must be a focus on people, the people and communities they design for, and the people of the firm, through a transfer of opportunity and generosity to one another for genuine collaboration. This simple guiding principle continues to motivate and inspire the team today.

Under the current leadership of registered architects including David Tordoff and Chad Brown, Hayball's design philosophy centers on a user-centered approach underpinned by rigorous research and inclusive consultation processes. By enabling multiple stakeholders to contribute to project visions, the firm creates environments that generate measurable social value through the wellbeing they foster. This methodology recognizes that designs impact the people who inhabit them, ensuring that each architectural intervention operates not merely as functional space but contributes positively to the flourishing of people, communities, and the planet.

The firm's design methodology emphasizes that innovation starts with enquiry. The research-based, user-centered design approach creates more sustainable outcomes for people and the planet. The multi-faceted approach to research, from formal partnerships to internally directed exploration, enhances design processes and significantly de-risks projects from initial design phases through to delivery. The practice believes that the best design results from exploration, research, different ways of thinking, and the open exchange of ideas.

Hayball's design work has received extensive international recognition, including the 2023 Dezeen Awards for both Sustainable Building of the Year and Housing Project of the Year for Nightingale Village, the Australian Institute of Architects (AIA) National Architecture Awards' David Oppenheim Award for Sustainable Architecture, and the 2022 Spa and Wellness Awards' Best Spa in Australasia category for Alba Thermal Springs and Spa. The firm's commitment to community connection, environmental harmony, and social impact ensures that each architectural work sets new standards for design excellence in the culture, community, and learning sectors.