Fortescue Future Industries Warehouse

Fortescue Future Industries’ (FFI) Green Energy Manufacturing (GEM) Centre is a milestone in the company’s strive for a global green energy transition. As Australia’s first multi-gigawatt electrolyser manufacturing facility enabling worldwide hydrogen production, Elevation Architecture were honoured to be involved in the realisation of this development. We were appointed by Hutchinson Builders as the lead design consultant to progress early concepts by Geyer Design & With Architecture Studio.

The GEM Centre resides on a 4 hectare site on the outskirts of Gladstone, and is comprised of a 12,500m2 electrolyser manufacturing facility with supporting 500m2 administration office. The sheer size of the building’s footprint (155m x 106m – roughly equivalent to 2 football fields) was a key contributor to several design challenges that included:

• Fire engineered protection and separation strategies that permitted adequate safety measures whilst maintaining general operational requirements
• Custom roof gutter profiles/brackets/sumps to manage rainwater collection and harvesting from the roof.